


no way out but through

by neuroglam



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Barebacking, Eventual Happy Ending, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, Infidelity, M/M, Painkillers, Underage Sex, Victor POV, Victurio-centric, fat-shaming at the end of Ch. 2, here yurio have a fix-it fic, this is probably not how Team USA works
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-26
Updated: 2017-04-26
Packaged: 2018-09-19 20:31:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 34,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9459362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neuroglam/pseuds/neuroglam
Summary: Eight years down the road, Yuri Plisetsky has just added his fifth World Championship gold to an obscene stack of European Championship and Gran Prix medals. Victor and Yuuri are married and coach rising skaters in Denver. All seems well--except for those times Victor takes a week or so and gets on a plane to Russia. End game: negotiated poly, with Yuri and Yuuri as metamours.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Tags and warnings will expand as the work progresses. Series has been planned and drafted. Updates may be intermittent, but they'll happen. 
> 
> Also, the Russian crowd lives in Moscow. Also, I appear to have aged up Yakov by five years. Uhm, oops? Creative license?
> 
> Also, watch the tags and don't come crying to me if you wanted to read fluff and that's not what you found in a fic whose first tag is Infidelity.

_i believe_

_this is heaven to_

_no one else but me_

_and i'll defend it, long as_

_i can be_

_left here to linger_

_in silence_

_if i choose to_

 

 

 

 

Every now and then, Victor gets a call.

He won’t pick up if he’s home with Yuuri, but he doesn’t need to: he recognizes the number well enough.

When Yuuri isn’t looking, he’d erase his calls received log.

Over the next couple of weeks, he’ll watch for gaps in their schedule. Something would always come up, something too important for Yuuri to be able to take time off but not important enough for Victor leaving to be a major dick move. Yuuri’s friends would be due to visit. One of Yuuri's trainees would be closing in on a competition date. Kids would come to the rink on a charity day trip. Something.

Next, Victor would book a ticket to Russia, send a text with his arrival time to the number whose call he deleted, and delete that sent message, too.

Last, he'd start making excuses: "Yakov’s neighbours called, said he’s ill”; “Georgi’s making the selection for this year’s incoming class and he wants me to take a look at the candidates for the junior program”; “Mila’s son’s turning four; she’s throwing a big party and she's gathering the old CSKA crowd, I haven’t seen them in forever.” Then: “I’m really sorry I’ll miss the last two days of your sister’s visit, I’ll make it up to you later, hm?”

He’d thread his fingers through his husband’s hair, nuzzle his ear then pull him close and kiss him – it always works as a distraction. But it’s more than that: Victor will be gone for sometimes close to a week, depending on how things go, and Yuuri will be missed. Saying goodbye properly is nice.

 

*~*~*

 

Warm, delicious anticipation has become a conditioned response to hearing, _Ladies and gentlemen, we will be landing at Sheremetyevo airport shortly—_ and not just because it’s fourteen hours from Denver to Moscow, and by this point his feet are dying.

Victor would go through the motions of preparing to land—tray table fastened, belt on, kindle back to the bag—while thinking about how _he_ will be there: sixty kilos of lean muscle and attitude leaning on the railing at Arrivals.

“You’re a sight for sore eyes,” Victor would say when he gets close enough to smell whatever pretentious perfume Yuri’s doused in.

Sometimes, they make it to the sleek red thing he drives, but more often they don’t. Yuri would start walking to the airport hotel as soon as they spot each other and would be already paying for one of the small, musty rooms by the time Victor manages to roll there with his luggage. Making it to the parking lot means better hotel, but Victor still treasures these times more.

He only has his carry-on with him today, so he breezes through immigration and out the door without waiting at the carousel. And there _he_ is, sin and spite, and thighs that flip quads for a living straining against skinny jeans—and Victor thinks about the grooves that the seams must have made in his skin and about how there’s just that bit more tension than normal in his shoulders. It would be the airport hotel this time, Victor knows. He follows as Yuri walks slightly ahead and watches his monstrosity of a leather, studs, and leopard fur coat ride above his ass even though it’s below freezing outside.

The bored girl at the counter takes Yuri’s card and checks them into the last room available. They walk down the familiar corridor, brown flowers and stains alternating on a background of grey. Their room door buzzes as the key card touches the reader.

As soon as they enter, all bets are off. Victor’s slammed into the door, hands pulling on his clothes and his hair, Yuri’s hard dick rubbing into him through two layers of jeans. Yuri bites his neck, presses harder, and yeah—they’ve missed each other. They’ve missed each other bad.

“You asshole. You fucking asshole,” Yuri snarls into Victor’s mouth whenever he’s not sucking on his lips for dear life, and Victor wants the skinny jeans off so bad. Still, he goes for the coat first and slides his palms under Yuri’s t-shirt as it falls to the floor.

“Hands off, you fucker, bed, now,” Yuri says and pushes him away; this is not going to be Victor’s show, not tonight. “Don’t fucking touch, not my clothes and not my dick; that load’s going up your ass, on the bed, ass up, c’mon, you asshole...”

“I...” Victor tries to interrupt as he’s being pushed down. _I need to wash myself there if you’re going to fuck me, it’s been two days and I was on a plane for fourteen hours-_

Yuri gets it: of course he would. It's not their first time at this, and it won't be the last. “I don’t fucking care, ass up,” he says, already rubbing Vaseline on his bare cock. "Fucking _show_ me.” So Victor does, removing his shirt, his trousers, his thoroughly boring boxer briefs, watching Yuri watch him. Yuri motions to the bed with his chin, lubed-up cock jutting out between the open flies of his jeans and Victor takes him in--the collarbones, the tiny waist, the strength in his spine. _A Study in Flawless and Fuck You_ , he mentally titles the image. _Ass up_ , he was told, so he stands on all fours.

Yuri's fingers go right for his hole. The dollop of vaseline he gets is generous but cold, and it’s been a fucking while; Victor needs more than just these perfunctory jabs he’s been given, god this is gonna hurt like hell-

“Do you fucking feel it, fucking _mine_ ,” Yuri growls and pushes into him way too rough and too early; fucks in and pulls and claws and bites at all of Victor he can reach. “You’ll be fucking thinking of me every time you fucking sit, you fucking asshole, do you hear me, mine," and it hurts, and it feels right, and Victor drops and sinks into it, giving himself over and letting Yuri's fury raze him. "Whose fucking come’ll be leaking out of your ass-” Yuri says and grabs his hips had with both hands, pulling him back. “Does the fucking butayarou do this to you, he doesn’t, does he; does he even know you, fucking mine, mine, mine,” Yuri pants, and Victor buries his head into the pillow and raises his ass higher.

Yuri's done way too soon and Victor's still hard, but this is as it should be--at thirty-five, managing it twice a night is rare, so he needs to plan ahead and save it.

Their second time is quieter. Anger fucked out, Yuri stays buried inside him until he gets hard again, then flips Victor on his back. He ruts into him missionary style, beads of sweat dropping down on his chest, and Victor keeps his legs nice and open while Yuri takes what he needs.

“Fucking asshole,” Yuri says as he comes and collapses exhausted on his chest. Victor wraps his hands around him and kisses the top of his hair until he catches his breath.

With a sigh, Yuri pulls out. Then he settles between Victor's spread legs and sucks him off while a froth of shit, come, and vaseline seeps into the sheets.

*~*~*

 

“I’m sore as fuck,” Victor says the next morning from the passenger seat of Yuri’s red BMW. “Everywhere.”

“Fucking _good._ ” Yuri mutters. Victor watches him, firm thighs and fur coat and slightly mussed hair, looking right ahead with one hand on the steering wheel, and saves the sight for later. They’re riding smoothly down the M-11, heading into Moscow with the rest of the orderly airport traffic. Snow-covered pines rush by on both sides.

“I can still taste you, you know.” Victor lets his voice drop low and rumble.

“Shut the fuck up unless you’re going to bend over and taste me again.” Yuri adjusts himself in his trousers, and it’s fucking tempting, to reach over and unbutton him; play around with his sore dick until he comes for the second time this morning.

“Say yes and I will,” Victor says.

Yuri sighs, deep and slow. The corners of his mouth fall.

“Where am I dropping you off?” He changes the topic.

Victor lets him. They both have times when the effort they put into living these moments to the fullest reminds them just how transient they are.

“Metro.” Victor makes an effort to visit Yakov when he comes, so this part requires not explanation.

Yuri nods. “Lilia said you should go visit her, too.” He says, a little nervous.

This is unusual. Victor and Lilia have never been that close. She and Yuri _are_ , though, especially now that Yuri’s grandfather’s passed away. For all intents and purposes, she’s essentially an in-law. Who now wants to see him.

“Do you know what it’s about?” He asks.

Yuri shrugs a shoulder and keeps his eyes straight on the road.

“Does she still live on Dneprovskaya?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll take a cab there after lunch,” Victor reassures. “I’ll leave my suitcase in the trunk and you can pick me up from there later. ”

“She may want to have dinner,” Yuri says awkwardly.

“Then we’ll have dinner,” Victor says, and puts a hand on his leg.

 

*~*~*

 

At 83, Yakov is almost completely out of his mind. “He recognizes nobody,” the little old lady from the first floor tells Victor. “I go every day, I cook, I clean. You don’t think about these things, you youngsters, but he wets himself sometimes. I need to change his pants and wash that, too.” And yeah, Victor supposes she’s due for a raise. He pays her half a monthly pension – it adds up to somewhere between twelve and fourteen bucks a week depending on how the exchange rate lands. In exchange, she cooks and cleans and checks up on Yakov for a couple of hours a day.

“Thank you, Nastasya Petrovna. You should have called. Or e-mailed. I’d have paid you more.”

“You think everyone can afford to make international phone calls whenever they please, do you?”

And yeah, there’s that. “Apologies. I’ll transfer some more money tomorrow.”

He doesn’t ask where Yakov’s pension went. Here’s the thing: Yakov used to make his way to the bank once a month and withdraw it all at once. He’d bring it home, give her some, and she’d get groceries. But if Yakov’s getting weaker, he’s probably not making the trip – not in the middle of winter. Senile as he is, as long as food comes on schedule and the apartment is warm, he wouldn’t ask questions.

Of course she wouldn’t call. The longer Victor is away, the longer she can get Yakov’s pension and pocket half of it.

 

*~*~*

 

Lilia’s back is straight, her bun tight as she looks at Victor over a bone china tea cup. She lives in a second-story walk-up with high ceilings and antique-looking, stylish furniture. Back when Victor was training, she’d been full-time at the Bolshoi, only taking an hour after work to come check up on everyone’s progress and assign stretching routines for the week ahead. Plus, she’d been Yakov’s wife, so Victor had instinctively kept away from her.

She’s not one to bother with small talk. Instead, she takes another sip from her tea and waits. It’s unnervingly effective; he feels like a misguided teenager with a need to confess.

“I went to see Yakov,” he says finally. “He’s not doing good.”

Lilia shrugs. “It’s where we’re all headed for.” She sips.

Victor has a sudden recognition of just how much it had gotten to him, seeing Yakov this time around: the squalor, the vegetative helplessness. Yakov, the guy who had watched over him, scolded him, gave him his best, cheered him on – wetting himself. She’s right – it is where everyone is headed, and it’s frightening. “I should probably move him to a facility,” he says.

“If you can pay for it. You don’t have children to take care of you, and neither does your husband. Or your lover,” she says with a pointed look. “You need to save.”

Victor sighs. So she knows exactly what he’s doing. Being confronted with it makes him feel exactly like the cheating piece of shit he is.

“Chin up. You won’t be the first two-timing cad in history and you won’t be the last. But you have a responsibility towards that boy. You’re all he has, and if you abandon him again, I will come, and I will find you. From beyond the grave if necessary.” She levels him with a look that’s kept ballerinas in line for forty-five years.

So it’s one of those talks. As bad as Victor feels, he’s also glad that there’s someone watching out for Yuri. “He has you, Lilia Baranovskaya. He’s friends with Otabek, then there’s his skating friends, and the guys he’s training with right now,” he says, because he can’t make himself look at her in the eyes and say, _I promise I won’t hurt him_.

“Otabek is in Almaty with his wife and his kids, being groomed to run the Kazakh Skating Federation. I am old; there’s not much I can do besides look at him sternly and hope that it works." She pauses. "And if you think he shows anything but a front to anyone at the rink, you don’t really know him as well as I thought you do.”

She wants him to promise her, and he can't. “He seems fine,” he hedges. “Well, a little more possessive than usual, but-”

Lilia snorts. “Yes, I can see that quite well.” She smirks.

Oh, shit. “My throat’s all blue and purple, isn’t it,” he says, embarrassed, and rubs the back of his neck. “I thought the scarf had it covered.”

“Go to his place, Vitya,” says Lilia softly.

“Eh, he doesn’t really like that. Prefers we check into a hotel-” There is no good way to explain to her that he understands why Yuri’s doing it, and respecting it is the least he can do given that he plans to be back on a plane to Denver in less than a week.

She huffs. “Honestly, you youngsters! You think you discovered affairs with married men! Who do you think told him to do that: _If you want there to be any pieces left to pick up when he’s done with his diversions, draw a line in the sand and stick to it._ ” And, Okay, so she knows.

“Go. To. His. Place.” Lilia says, broking no argument. “When he comes to pick you up, tonight. Make him drive you there and show it to you. As is.”

Victor is worried, now. “Is something happening?” His head is going through the possibilities. Part of it is money, for sure. It's always money with skating. But if Lilia has seen fit to call him here, that's not all.

“See for yourself. And don’t you _dare_ fail him. That boy is one of Russia’s best skaters. He surpassed you at twenty-two. He is a work of art, on the ice and off it. You let him think he is negligible once before, when you took off because your career was more important; you left, without an explanation, and he was fifteen." She looks at him sternly.

"He was proud, he was snarky, but he was _fifteen_. He had no way to put it into perspective, no way to process it other than think of himself as left behind, abandoned, and less than--and he pulled up his anger as a shield, and threw himself into work, and beat you in a year, with no support, while you were off loving someone else.

"Yakov and I were the only ones with enough clue to even try to pick up the pieces, and for all the good Yakov is as a coach, he is an emotionally stunted, constipated excuse for a man. I should know, I was married to him long enough.”

Victor sighs. He hasn’t been lectured like this since he was fourteen. She is trying to guilt him, and it’s working, but it’s not just that. “I will go. I know what I’m doing is wrong, but… I care about him. I care about both of them.” The stern matron act is working; he wants to tell. He hasn't told anyone, what it's like for him.

“Do. Not. Fail. Him.” She cuts off his pity party before it can even get started, and yeah--nothing can put you in your place so much as a dignified, stern lady refusing to give zero shit about your self-generated melodrama.

“I won’t,” he promises quietly, and hopes he’ll be man enough to live up to it.

 

*~*~*

 

When Yuri comes to pick up Victor after practice, Lilia is quick to shoo them out the door.

“You can barely stand up," she tells Yuri, "and this one here is jet lagged and needs to sleep. Come visit me later. I’m not going anywhere.”

“All right,” Yuri says, obedient. “I’ll drop by next week.”

“Good. Now off with you,” Lilia says and gives a steady, stern look to Victor while Yuri’s down tying his shoes and not paying attention. _Remember what we talked about._ Victor nods at her. He’s on it.

“I want to go to your place tonight,” Victor says in the car.

“Actually, that’s a little-”

“Yuri.” Victor says sternly. He’s just gotten a three-hour masterclass on cutting through someone’s bullshit without even saying a word, and he’s not letting it go to waste. “Your place.”

“Okay,” Yuri sighs, subdued and staring straight ahead at the road. “It’s a mess, that’s all.”

 _A mess_. Weak. “I don’t care. I still want to see where you live. We can even be decent and take care of the bedsheets.”

Yuri snorts, “Nah, bedsheets are a mess. Haven’t changed them in more than a month anyway; whatever mess we make can’t be worse than what’s there allready.”

“Mess it is, then,” Victor smiles, and his eyes crinkle at the corners.

“You sure you don’t want to go to the Hilton?" Yuri tries. "My place is a fucking pigsty.”

“Yu. Ri.”

“All right, all right. You want to go to my place, we’ll go there.”

This is a little too easy a win. Money aside, Victor thinks he knows exactly what he'll find out when they get there. It's not a matter of if, but how bad.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Added three more scenes to the end of Chapter 1 (thought they fit better there). This chapter is unbetaed. If the premise of the fic appeals to you and you'd like in on it, drop a msg :). Thanks!
> 
> P.S. Many thanks to Belawyn and Bec for pointing out things that weren't working with the story and helping to (hopefully) make it better! All concrit is welcome!

“There” turns out to be a one-bedroom apartment on the nineteenth floor of a high-rise tower downtown. Rent must be a fortune here: all fixtures in the building are brass, the hallway floors are either marble or a very successful imitation, and everything is spotlessly clean. 

Yuri’s place, as advertised, is anything but. Victor must have made a face.

“No complaints – you were warned, and you still did this to yourself,” Yuri jokes. “Just sit on the couch while I pick up a little.”

Victor levels him with a look straight out of the Lilia Baranovskaya school. 

“No,” he says simply, and heads for what must be the bedroom. He suspects he knows what he's looking for.

Yuri is behind him, head down, rubbing his face. 

Victor doesn’t notice it at once-–there’s clothes and shoes and designer bags and pre-made meal containers--“Performance Meals,” Victor used them, too, back in the day--and then he sees exactly what he thought he'd find: empty pill containers, all over the bedroom floor.

There’s more in the ensuite, rolling around with make-up and perfume bottles and Yuri’s hair press because _of course_. It’s not that uncommon for athletes to take codeine; injuries are common, soreness more so. It’s a legal painkiller as far as doping is concerned, but there’s athletes taking codeine and then there’s this. Victor picks an empty bottle off the bathroom floor and another from the counter. He reads the labels. 

This has been going on for a while. Doses have been going up. 

Victor is thankful that Lilia sat him down for that lecture. 

He sets the bottles back down. Yuri is sitting on the edge of his unmade bed, elbows on his knees and hands in his hair, and Victor remembers what that feels like. This is about the only fucking advantage to being an adult; going, _I know this, I've been here before_ when you see shit approach the fan in slow motion. 

“Oh, fuck you and your concerned face,” Yuri says, looking up. “Codeine’s fucking allowed by regulations, it’s fucking normal and I’m fucking fine!”

Victor wisely doesn’t say, _so fucking fine you felt the need to persuade me how fine you were before I ever said anything_. Instead, he walks to the bed and sits against the headboard. “Take two weeks off practice,” he says. “Come with me to Yuuri’s onsen, take the time to detox. We'll say you stayed late at the rink, you fell and hurt your ankle, you're at the hot springs to recuperate. Nobody has to know.”

“Are you fucking serious?" Yuri goes on the defensive. "I can’t fucking take two weeks to- you fucking think you know everything about my life, do you?” It's nothing less than Victor would have done, had anyone sat him down for this same talk at that time of his life. 

“Yuri.” Victor says sternly. The talk needs to happen, wounded pride or not.

“And you fucking what–-want me to watch you and the fucking butayarou be lovey-dovey-”

“Yuri!” Victor shouts back, and it finally works. “Come here,” Victor says, opening his arms. 

Yuri gives him a stinky look. 

“Come,” Victor says, calmer. “Let me tell you a story. When I’m done, you decide how mad you are and what you want to do. But hear me out first, yeah? Beginning to end. Come on.”

Yuri looks at Victor suspiciously. Victor keeps his arms open, and looks back. Finally, Yuri sighs and goes over to cuddle up to Victor’s side. He might have been shouting just a minute ago, but now he's clutching at him like a lifeline: head on his shoulder, one arm between Victor and the bed, one arm over. Victor wraps an arm around him, too. 

Victor bends down and kisses the crown of Yuri’s hair. “There were are,” he says. Yuri is a proud creature who protects himself for dear life; if stern looks make it this easy to get him to settle, that in and of itself speaks volumes. Things aren't as bad as they could be, but they must be bad enough.

"I don't need to tell you what it takes to make it where you are," Victor starts. "We both crossed into senior division young, knowing full well we're exposing ourselves to a higher risk of injury. My right knee started aching when I was twenty five."

"Did you tell Yakov?" Yuri asks. 

"Did you tell Georgi?" Victor answers with a smirk. "Yeah, I thought so." 

"Georgi's an idiot. Yakov wasn't." That much is true. To think about it, in Yuri's shoes, he wouldn't trust Georgi either. The guy couldn't handle his own melodrama, let alone that of others. 

"No, I didn't tell," Victor says. "I couldn’t show weakness--not to the up-and-coming sharks who were at my heels at every step, circling and waiting for me to slip, and least of all to fucking Yakov. The last thing I wanted was for him to say, _allright, my boy, good going that was, you’re not useful any more, let me go look for your replacement_ "

Yuri relaxes slightly against his chest. Good. 

"Yakov was the only one who'd taken the time to focus on me, to mentor me." He continues. " _So, my knee hurts a little, whatever, I’ll take some painkillers and I’ll be fine_ , I told myself. _It’s sport, it’s normal, athletes get injured all the time; we fucking live on painkillers_. I’d need a pill, I’d pop one; I was focused on my practice, on what I had to do to get that next medal. I wouldn’t think. So the acetaminophen stopped working, and I went on codeine."

"If this turns into an _I've been in your shoes_ lecture..." 

"Nah. I wasn't in your shoes. I was worse." He tangles his fingers in Yuri's hair. Golden strands shine next to his wedding ring.

“By the time I was twenty-six, the pain spread up to my hip. I was taking forty milligrams every four or five hours, just to be able to sleep and keep jumping–-my entire body would start aching if I missed a dose. My head would hurt like a bitch." 

Yuri sighed. Familiar, then.

"I figured out what was happening to me," Victor goes on. "So I thought, _I’ll dial it down during practice and the old dose would work better when competitions roll around_. I thought I was so smart, I swear. I thought, _this is under control, the pills are just a tool, I just need to figure out how to game them…_ "

"Of course they're a fucking tool," Yuri grumbles. 

"And just like you, I went out there, and I got my fifth World Championship gold, and I wasn’t going to let anybody know–-not anyone, for any reason. 

“Then I was twenty-seven, and you were about to cross into senior division. You were cocky, and full of yourself, and absolutely clueless of how brilliant you were. I'd been skating for twenty years by that time, I knew talent when I saw it. The only thing you needed was for someone to light a fire under your ass the right way. 

"You really thought that about me?"

"Of course. You were good enough to be a threat. I knew that even if I'd managed to win, I would no longer be the one surprising the audience. There was Victor Nikiforov, same old, same old, and there was you: a graceful and gritty and driven and absolutely astounding youngster who could have matched me step by step. All I had on my side was you not seeing just how fucking good you were, and Yakov coasting on impressions. 

"One day, codeine didn’t cut it any more; I’d get too drowsy if I took too much. So I got some oxy, and told myself, _oh, it’s just this one time, to tide me through this practice_ \-- and then somehow, I took another one, and another. 

"I’d tell myself all these things: _I am only using this now, to deal with practice; I can always wean myself off right before the competition, blah, blah, blah._ But deep inside, I knew it was bullshit. It felt like a freight train was coming towards me and there was nothing I could do to stop it. 

"I knew exactly where this would end. Option one: even if I somehow managed to get myself under control, I could lose to you. I would fade to nothingness, retreat quietly with a pat on the back, the spotlight on this gorgeous, young spunky thing who managed to dethrone Victor Nikiforov in his very first season in senior division. Or, option two: I would fail my doping tests, and I'd be booed off in disgrace, all my accomplishments discredited and my coaching career torn to shreds. 

"I could have retired, but I wasn’t prepared. Yakov had a good couple of years yet in him; there wasn't an immediate coaching position in Russia I could've filled on short notice. I hadn’t networked. I had no experience.

“I didn’t know what to do; the oxy kept me numb, but deep down I was freaking out and so, so ashamed. I felt like Victor Nikiforov was a fraud, that I was a complete failure and nothing I’d achieved ever mattered. If I hadn't been able to go to Yakov two years ago, I could do it even less then. So I stood there like a fucking deer in the headlights waiting for the freight train to hit--until one day, I saw my meal ticket out."

“The fucking video,” Yuri murmurs into Victor’s shirt.

“I was looking into him even earlier—I know it got you worked up, Georgi told me about the bathroom after that Gran Prix—but yeah. The fucking video,” he confirms. “There was this guy who’d slobbered all over me, crush the size of a planet, his gut fucking wiggling every time he lands a jump, skating my program, going viral. 

"And the thing is, his technique is good: nobody could do what he did without that. It’s all in his head: he skated it, but I’d seen him compete, he’s a fucking ball of nerves – and I know I can fix it; I know how to use that. If I can get this guy to a medal, even if it’s not gold, I’d have a high-publicity success story to back up my coaching abilities. I’d have another surprise.”

“That’s why you left,” Yuri mumbles again.

“Yeah. That’s why I left.” 

"And then you fucking fell for him," Yuri says, bitter.

"Yeah," Victor says quietly. "Yeah, I did." 

On Victor's chest, Yuri sighs deeply. Victor pets his hair. “Come away with me. Let me help," he says. "I don’t ever want you to be where I was, two years from now. We’ll sort it all out. We’ll sort out this place, we’ll sort out the codeine, we’ll sort out everything. Give it two weeks, then decide if you’re going back or if you’d rather quit while you’re ahead. That all I want—two weeks cold turkey, starting now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to Narahat for pointing out that codeine will get Yuri in enough trouble in and of itself as one of its metabolites is morphine, which is banned. There is science that can be used to compare concentrations of morphine and codeine in urine to determine which of the drugs an athlete's taken, but there still would have been an unpleasant immediate scandal even if the issue was later resolved.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I need a beta like I need to breathe

 

Yuri takes a deep breath, then lets it out. Victor can feel his shoulders tense under his hand as he steels himself. “Yeah.” He nods into Victor’s shirt. “Yeah, Okay. I’ll do it.”

“Thank fuck,” Victor says in his hair. “Now let’s empty what you’ve got down the toilet.”

“Can I just have one. Just this last time.” Yuri says. “I need to sleep so bad.” Victor

“I’ll help you sleep.”

“But tomorrow at practice-”

“We stayed at the rink late tonight. You wanted to show me your quad loop, you slipped, you hurt your ankle. We’ll call Georgi and tell him you’re ill. Come on. Hand it over.”

Yuri sighs and gets up off the bed, shoulders slumped, and digs in amongst the carnage on the floor. He goes for the pocket of his leather coat, then moves to another pile and digs out a bag, all studs and dangly bits, and digs in that, too. Two Tylenol bottles make their way to Victor. They look completely normal; white and ordinary, labels peeling slightly.

Victor is glad—at least Yuri is not an idiot. But Yuri, apparently, thought Victor was. “Do you have any more?”

Yuri looks down at his hands and takes three beats to answer. “Yeah, I do. Bathroom.”

“Okay,” Victor says walks over to the ensuite, Yuri trailing after. There’s a half-full bottle, this time in its original prescription package, right on the counter, next to the toothpaste.

Victor takes all thee and tips them down the toilet, Yuri watching from behind his back like someone’s just told him he’s not allowed joy in his life any longer. When the last of the pills hit the water and the packaging tossed to the floor, Yuri wraps clings to Victor’s side and holds, face mashed into his shirt.

Victor flushes the toilet.

“How are you doing on money,” he asks, even though between skating expenses, the BMW payments, the rent, and the fake scripts—not to mention the mess of designer garb on the floor—he thinks he’s got a pretty good idea.

“Fuck if I know,” Yuri muffles in his shirt. “There’s the sponsorships. And I think I’ve still got some from Chris,” he adds.

Fair point—half of the clothes, bags, and toiletries strewn around the flat probably came for free in exchange for clever product placement on Instagram. Victor remembers that part, being paid to lounge casually with a Starbucks cup and tag his posts with the brand of his shoes.

And then, there’s the Chris thing. Victor’s never thought there’d come a day when he’d be _g_ _rateful_ for it. He remembers when it started: he was riding in a cab to the airport, Yuri next to him on the back seat, asking, “Hey, that Christophe guy—is he legit?”

Victor had said, “Yes, he is,” because Chris _wa_ _s._ But as soon as he left Yuri on the other side of _International_ _Departures_ , he was on the phone to Dubai, zero fucks given about whether Chris was sleeping.

He didn’t even wait for a “hi” before he’d launched into, “If you let a hair fall out of his head or you let him into the cocaine, no matter how recreationally” and “You will watch over him and you will be right there or on call if something happens” and “I don’t care what rich upstanding businessmen you deal with; I don’t care if it’s the fucking crown prince—you will them, upfront, that if they want to _party_ with an Olympic medalist, condoms will be non-negotiable.”

Throughout it all, Chris had hummed sleepily; said “yes, of course,” a lot.

“Yours, then, is he?” he had chulckled softly, and Victor had felt himself deflate, sighing into the phone. He neither confirmed nor denied, but he didn’t need to, not to Chris.

It felt good that someone knew—it felt good that _Chris_ knew.

“I’ll watch after him.” Chris had said. “You know me. I would have even if I weren’t your friend.”

Chris had never brought up marriages and cheating and morality, and the next time Victor was in Russia, the red BMW showed up, Yuri grinning and proud at the wheel.

Victor had squeezed his hand and said, “If you don’t want to use condoms with me, use them with everyone else, yeah?” and Yuri had nodded, and that had been that—except not.

Victor had low-key fretted about it throughout the trip and had ended up calling Chris again, this time more worried than forceful, babbling and trying to ask if everything had gone Okay.

Chris had cut him off, completely. “If you want to know details, a) you guys need to negotiate, and b), whatever it is that you want to know, you need to hear it from him.” And Victor had shut up, because Chris was right, like he usually was when you needed someone to sort out the ethics of a situation

Victor had tried to raise it only once again, this time with Yuri, and got the hissiest, snarliest lecture on how exactly none of this was Victor’s choice to make. “I want you to stay out of it,” Yuri had said once he’d ran out of steam.

“I just-”

“Victor.” Yuri had cut him off. “Even if anything happens, I’ll deal. I don’t want you stirring shit. I am not. Going. Back.”

Victor didn’t need this explained. There were things like that with the two of them; things that didn’t need to be said because they both knew and were both _there:_ two blond gay boys from the wrong side of the tracks with fierce drive and families that never really watched out. Victor wasn’t _going back_ either—not to the perpetually chilly, roach-ridden novostroika flats the likes of which they’d both grown up in, and not to “sandwiches” of plain bread and canola oil from the bottle, salt and pepper for taste. He had flown off to Japan to get into the pants of a developed country passport holder _because_ he wasn’t going back. And as sincere as he’d been when he’d said _I Do_ to Yuuri, he’d still spent time thinking of how to arrange their lives so they both end up with an actual, legal marriage certificate and US passports.

None of them were going back—and Victor wouldn’t want them to. So he’d promised to stay out of it unless explicitly told to help, by Yuri and Yuri alone.

And that had been that—this time for real.

From that point on, Victor hadn’t asked, and Yuri never told.

*~*~*

In the bathroom of Yuri’s luxury condo, Victor puts an arm around Yuri’s shoulder and holds.

“Hey,” he says softly and pets Yuri’s hair. “We’ll fix this. It will be all right. For the next too months, it will feel like anything but, because withdrawal will make you depressed and depression is a bitch. But I need you to trust that you’ll get through it—even when you don’t see how.”

Victor is not sure exactly how he’ll make it all right. What he will do is meet things as they come and keep putting one leg in front of the other, and never show doubt. He’s wiser now, and he knows that you don’t always need to have a plan; sometimes the best thing you can do for people who’ve lost faith is to keep believing when they can’t.

Some days, he recognizes the cosmic irony of it: without Yuri, his marriage to Yuuri quite likely wouldn’t have lasted this long. Without Yuuri, he would not have been half the man Yuri needed him to be right now.

He would not be himself, without either of them.

“I’m going to change your sheets,” Victor says. “Then I’m putting you in the shower, and then you can play starfish for the rest of the night. Let’s see how much work it takes me to get you to sleep.”

*~*~*

It ends up taking a hand job and being sucked off twice: once the boring way and once with Victor’s fingers up the ass. Yuuri is dozing fitfully, flush with Victor’s side, but Victor’s jet-lagged brain is past exhaustion, in that state where you can’t do anything but stare at a point, but you can’t sleep either. So he lies next to Yuri and thinks about what he’ll need to do.

One, he needs to see Yuri’s finances so he can assess the extent of the catastrophe.

He needs to see Nastasya Petrovna; negotiate new wages and responsibilities.

He needs to find a lawyer and start the process to get power of attorney over Yakov. He’s not sure how much of a pain in the ass it will be; it’s possible he might needing to get himself adopted first—in which case it’s good to start now, even before it is strictly necessary. It doesn’t take much to catch a scared old man in one of his rare lucid times and tell him, _your boy isn’t here; sign the apartment over to me and I’ll care_ _of_ _you._

Yakov doesn’t have children but there may still be claimants on the estate, such as it is; he’ll need to check up on that.

Finally, Victor needs to call Georgi and get Lilia Baranovskaya in on _this_. He’ll also need garbage bags.

He doesn’t realize when he finally conks out, only that he comes to it in the middle of the night, woken up by Yuri clutching his arm and pressing his forehead to his shoulder.

“How is it?” he asks, even though he knows full well it’s a bitch.

“My head fucking hurts.”

“It’ll get worse,” Victor says—because it will.

“Fuck this shit.”

Victor rearranges himself and pulls Yuri close. “I know.”

He dozes in and out; Yuri keeps squirming and groaning. This right here is the shittiest part about quitting painkillers: everything hurts—your head, your muscles, everything—but you can’t even sleep, the way that you can with a hangover. You can’t even take a Tylenol; it wouldn’t make a dent anyway. There’s nothing for it—Yuri has to ride it out.

“Can I just have a little bit, just half a pill, Victor please, just to fall asleep,” Yuri whimpers. Victor stares at the angry red face of the digital clock. It’s 3:03.

At seven, he gets up and calls Lilia. He needs her here. He’s had the “just half a pill” conversation with himself enough times to know exactly how it’ll go if he leaves Yuri alone while he runs errands.

“Lilia Baranovskaya, I apologize it’s still early-”

“Never mind, I was waiting for you to call.” Stern, firm, and no-nonsense; he doesn’t realize how much he needs someone like her before he hears her voice. “He won’t be the first ballerina to do this, and he won’t be the last. I just hope he’s the last one whose hair I’ve got to hold while they puke.”

“Can you come over?”

“Already on my way.” Victor’s grateful. “How bad is it?” she asks.

“Only codeine, but a lot of it.”

“Good. Could be worse. He’ll be miserable, but he’ll be fine. Have you called the rink?”

“Doing it right after I get off the phone with you. Then I need to go run some errands. Yakov.”

“Yes.” He hears her coat rustle and her front door close. “Do you children have groceries? Ginger tea?”

“No.” He hasn’t checked, but it’s a safe assumption.

“Okay. I’ll be an hour—maybe a little longer.”

“Thank you.”

“No need to thank me,” she says and the conversation cuts.

Victor stares at his cell phone screen.

From the bed, Yuri groans. “Shit,” he says, miserable. “I didn’t want her to know.” Didn’t want to disappoint her, Victor hears.

He walks back to the bed. “She could tell. Who do you think sent me here?”

“Fuck.”

“She’s worked with dancers for longer than you’ve been alive. She gets it.”

Yuri groans and curls up tighter.

“She’ll be here in about an hour.”

“Shit,” Yuri says, disappointed. A little too much so, and Victor’s not letting that fly.

“Where’s the rest of it?”

“I don’t have any I swear-”

“Yuri.” Victor says sternly. “You promised me.”

“Come back to bed, at least.” Yuri somehow manages to lift his head and try to look at Victor from beneath his lashes. It’s the way addicts get, and Victor hates it, what the pills make him do. Likes it, too, because you can only be a manipulative little shit if you’ve got someone to manipulate. Victor hadn’t had the luxury, only as much oxy as he’d needed to titrate himself over a month.

Thank fuck the Katsukis had booze.

“Tell me where the rest of it is,” he tells Yuri. Remembering has snuck a softness in his tone. “I’ll even give you a massage—starting from your scalp, then going down. I’ll rub your back, your butt. It’ll be nice; it will distract you at least.”

“Suck me off?”

“Okay. Now where is it?”

“Nightstand drawer. The right one.”

“Right,” Victor says and goes to empty what he hopes are the last of the painkillers.

He takes the time to relieve himself and brushes his teeth with Yuri’s brush.

He goes into the kitchen to get a glass of water.

“Bitch, where are you,” comes a whine from the bed. Victor fills the glass again and brings it over.

“Drink.”

“Bitch, you promised.”

Victor sits on the bed and pulls on the curled-up cocoon that is Yuri. “I did. First, drink.”

“Not thirsty.”

“Drink. The sooner you do it, the sooner we get to the good stuff. If you dawdle, Lilia will get here right in the middle of the good part.”

The cocoon unfolds and up comes Yuri, pushing himself up on shaky hands and looking exactly as miserable as Victor expects him to be. He does, however, drink the water.

“Good,” Victor says and takes the empty glass.

“Bathroom,” Yuri says and shuffles unsteadily to the ensuite.

Victor wonders if he should follow him.

In the end, he doesn’t—that way lie nagging, and paranoia, and nothing productive, for either of them. Instead, he fishes a bottle of body lotion from the detritus on the floor so he can use it while massaging Yuri.

“Asshole, you brushed your teeth with my toothbrush,” Yuri says and sits next to Victor, smelling like toothpaste.

“Figured I’ve had your dick in my mouth so it was fine,” Victor says. He studies Yuri for a moment, even though he rationally knows that he won’t be able to tell even if he’d taken anything. A pill wouldn’t be able to hit in the five minutes Yuri’s been missing.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Yuri says, sour. “I don’t have any more. Though I fucking wish I did.” He nudges Victor’s leg. “Now, deliver.”

Victor laughs and scoots back to sit against the headboard, cross-legged. “Come here,” he rumbles. “Lie on your back; head in my lap… good. Close your eyes.”

It’s strange, looking into Yuri’s lax face from this angle. It brings home how they don’t really do this—just spend time touching each other for the sake of touching; tracing thumbs over eyebrows to feel them smooth and sleek under his thumbs, like he does now. He makes small circles where the eyebrows start: first light, then firmer.

Yuuri’s forehead is tense; his eyes flutter, but Victor’s fingers move on his forehead, his cheekbones, then all the way down, under the chin.

At last, Yuri groans and settles under Victor’s fingers.

Victor rubshis temples, then all the way around his hairline and down to the base of his scull, where he presses.

Yuuri moans. Victor thinks.

Mostly, he thinks about how foreign and inconceivable it would have been, ten years ago, to imagine himself in Yuri’s place. The very idea that he could be held when he’s scared, or have his scalp rubbed when he had a headache—it would just not have occurred. He’d always known, implicitly, that he’d had nobody to rely on but himself, even as he’d mastered appearing friendly and approachable.

Yuri was the opposite: a perpetual ball of snark, walls upon walls of defences topped with hissing barbed wire, yet he could trust so easily in his moment of weakness—could be vulnerable even to someone like Victor.

“Turn over,” he murmurs. “Shirt off. Let me do your back.”

Yuri groans, half-dazed, but doesn’t move.

“Okay, okay,” says Victor and keeps carding his fingers through his hair.

Lilia knocks on the door at 8:07 by the bedside clock. Victor dislodges a drowsy Yuri from his lap and tucks him in, then goes to let her in.

She doesn’t greet him, just steps past him into the house, coat still on, and huffs at the detritus in the living room.

“Bedroom’s worse,” Victor says.

She nods. “The kitchen?”

“There,” Victor points.

She walks over, boots still on, and starts to open and close cupboards. Last, she checks the fridge. “How long are you staying?”

“Two more days. Three.”

“Okay,” she says and walks back out. “I’ll be back with groceries. And trash bags.”

“Would you like-”

“No. No money,” she waves him off. “I want to see that idiot well as much as you do.”

“Allright.” He doesn’t offer help with carrying things; one of them needs to stay with Yuri at all times.

Once she’s out the door, Victor goes to the bedroom. Yuri’s back to being curled in a tight, miserable ball. “What did she say?” he asks from somewhere under the covers.

“That you are an idiot, and that she wants to see you well. Smart woman. I agree on both counts,” Victor says softly.

“My head hurts. My knees. Everything.”

That sounds about right. “I know,” Victor says. “Tomorrow’s gonna be the worst. Day two.”

“Worse than this?”

“Yes. You’re still not at the fun part, where you start feeling like puking.”

“Fuck.”

Victor walks over and squats next to the bed, facing the bundle of Yuri. “Stay strong for me.” He moves a strand of his hair away from his face.

Yuri swallows and nods.

“Shhhh. You’ll be fine.” Victor cups Yuri’s face, and just holds. “You’ll be back to your hair-pressed glory in no time, you’ll see.”

Yuri nuzzles into Victor’s palm. Victor lets him, for a while.

“Where’s your laptop?” he asks. Might as well use the time until Lilia is back.

“Living room, on the armchair, under the clothes.”

“Charger?”

“Under the coffee table.”

“Okay.”

Victor comes back with Yuri’s MacBook, plugs it in, and settles next to Yuri on the bed. “Log in?” he says and pats Yuri’s shoulder through the blankets.

Yuri groans unhappily.

“Do it or you’ll have to tell me what the password is so I can do it myself.”

“No.”

“That’s what I thought. C’mon.”

Yuri rolls over and gives Victor the stinky eye, but does as he’s told.

“I need to see your bank statements,” Victor says. “Credit cards, loans, the works.”

Yuri watches him for the longest time, his woozy brain trying to parse what he’d heard. Victor can see him try to decide if he should trust him. Finally, Yuri sighs and starts opening browser windows. The idiot’s got all of his log-in info saved into Safari—Victor didn’t think there were still people stupid enough to do this. For now, though, he lets it go—pick your battles and all that.

“Here,” Yuri says morosely and passes back the MacBook. He curls into Victor’s side as Victor starts poring into the financials.

It’s bad, but not as bad as Viktor thought. Rent, bills, and the car are being paid automatically from Yuri’s main checking account. On the plus side, there’s payments from sponsorships, clearly above-board and marked with company names, and the occasional transfer from Chris—ten thousand US dollars a pop. Victor smiles lightly: kid could do worse.

Yuri’s got two credit cards, one in dollars to use when traveling abroad (negative $862), and one in rubles (negative 124,638). Victor does some quick math; it’s around two thousand bucks. There’s 204, 334 rubles Yuri’s account—approximately a month’s rent and a car payment.

A minute to log in and a couple of clicks transfer three thousand dollars from Victor’s personal account to Yuri’s.

A couple more clicks pay off Yuri’s cards.

Next, Victor opens his e-mail and sends off a note to Chris: _Yuri owes $18,537 on his car. Call whoever you need to call and get it taken care of. Non-negotiable._ It might work, it might not, or it might work part way; Victor’s doesn’t have a clue—doesn’t know who “whoever you need to call” is and whether they’ll wire twenty thousand bucks to a Russian skater just because he’s sex on legs and they’ve got cash to blow. But the worst thing that can happen is they say no. So.

Chris texts him back almost immediately. _Is there a problem?_

 _Yes. But not mine to share,_ Victor texts back.

_Ah. He told you about the pills?_

Seriously, did _everyone_ know before him? Though it doesn’t escape his notice that even if Yuri hadn’t told him, Chris would be telling him now. Looks like Baranovskaya is not the only person who’s been worried.

 _He didn’t tell me_ _._ _Lilia ratted him out._ He thinks some, then writes, _I’ll be taking him with me to Hasetsu. He may not be available for a while, depending._

_You told Yuuri? How did it go?_

_Not yet._

_If it goes South, you’re welcome to my guest room—any and all of you three, in whatever combination. Good luck._

_Thanks,_ Victor writes, text disproportionately short for how much relief he feels. He can’t picture how dragging a Yuri (in withdrawal) to his husband and saying, “Um, surprise,” can turn out, other than like a total disaster, so it means a lot to know that Yuri will be with someone trusted no matter what. He texts, _I’m grateful that the offer’s there._

 _It’s what friends are for—and I’m friends with all three of you assholes. Well- two assholes and a sweet, innocent soul._ This makes Victor laugh.

 _I’ll wire the money into his usual account,_ Chris texts. _Would that work?_

_Yeah._

_2 days. I’ll do my best._

_Thank you._

_How is he?_

_Day 1 cold turkey._

_Tell him I’m sending good luck vibes. Ttyl_

“Who are you texting?” Yuri mutters into his side.

“Chris. Said he’s rooting for you and to wish you good luck. And that you can crash with him if things don’t work out in Japan.”

“Hmm. He’s, like, decent. Weirdly so.”

“Yup,” Victor says. He agrees: it had felt weird to meet someone who’d help you just because he can, especially coming out of the cut-throat meat-grinder that is professional sports in Russia. Chris touched people because it gave him joy, did the right thing from a place of unflinching integrity, and was utterly free from moralistic hang-ups. It had blown Victor’s mind when they’d first met, at seventeen. It had taken Victor exactly two hours to decide to cultivate this friendship, and he’s never regretted it.

He logs out of all accounts before closing the MacBook and putting it away on the nightstand. Now for the hard part: Chris might come through with the car loan money or he may not, but there’s no going around this.

“You need to move out.”

“No.”

“I looked through everything,” Victor says calmly. “Trust me.”

“I can pay my bills, whatever.”

That’s true. Still. “Paying your bills is not the problem. The problem is, you aren’t saving. Sbest case scenario, you’ve still got two more years left in your knees—three if you’re willing to settle for looking up at Kenjorou Minami and Carlos Gratz on the podium-”

Yuri’s making this pinched, constipated expression—probably thinking of ceding the gold to Minami. “I’ll slice through my own tendons before that happens,” he snarls—well, as best as one can snarl with a pounding head and one’s eyes squeezed shut.

It’s quite the rivalry the two’ve got going: Minami wouldn’t hear of training with anyone but Yuuri, and Yuri holds grudges like a pro. Poor Minami gets it by association. For three years now, Yuri’s been getting his gold at the Euros, Minami at the Four Continents, and Worlds and the GPF have been slaughter. It made for stellar figure skating, so Victor’d be the last to complain.

“Forget Minami,” he says. “The point is, you’ve only got so much time until your sponsorships dry up—and that’s if you aren’t forced to retire with an injury. If something were to happen in the next two years, you’ve got zero cash to your name. You’d need to give up this place and the BMW anyway, and that at a time when you’ll feel even less like moving than now.”

Yuri says nothing. Either he hasn’t thought about the future or he’s been trying very hard not to. Victor remembers that: the constant pressure to train for the next event, then the next, then the next. It’s very easy to put off thinking about the big picture. It’s what landed _him_ in a mess at 27, and it’s what’ll land Yuri in one, too, if nobody does anything about it.

“I’m assuming you want to keep the BMW?” Victor asks.

Yuri nods. Of course he does; that car makes him so damn happy.

“So move out of here and pick a nice studio, somewhere central. Save half of your rent each month in an emergency fund.”

“You’re not gonna be my sugar daddy?” Yuri asks sarcastically.

“You can borrow once or twice if you need to. But I won’t be able to get away with much more than that.” He doesn’t need to explain: he’s married. His first financial responsibility is to his husband.

“I hate you. I really, fucking hate you.”

Victor rubs a palm on Yuri’s back to mollify him. “Hey. I’ll help in any way I can. I just can’t make you my kept girl even if I wanted to.”

“Call me a kept girl again and I’ll end you.”

Victor won’t let him change the subject. “I don’t want you to lose everything when you retire. Depending on the kindness of strangers is not where you want to be; take it from a guy who was there.”

“I’ll tape you one day and I’ll play it to him, just to see the look on his face.”

Victor doesn’t say anything. It’s empty threats; it’s not the first time Yuuri’s vented the hurt of coming second best. Victor deals with it like he always does—disregarding the surface-level snark and trying to reassure without making impossible promises.

“Come here,” he says and pulls on Yuri, who growls like he really doesn’t want to be moved. Too bad: Victor wants to move him. “Come on, sit between my legs, I want to hold you properly.”

“And people say _I’m_ the one who behaves like he’s barely out of high school,” Yuri grumbles, but drags himself up to curl into Victor. “Do you, perchance, want to wrap your arms around me and gaze into my cerulean eyes? Tell me how beautiful they are and how they match my pure soul?”

Victor chuckles. “They _are_ beautiful. I love your eyes.”

Yuri just huffs—it’s all the energy he’s got, looks like.

They stay like this, in silence. Yuri suffers with his head on Victor’s chest, his eyes closed and forehead creased. Victor holds him and thinks: about how he needs to call Yuuri and his in-laws. Google some movers; get them to deliver packing boxes. Attorney. Georgi. Plane tickets.

“We can pack you up before you go,” Victor says, because this is happening. Yuri’s too miserable to protest, and he’s not above taking advantage. “We can store your things at Lilia’s.”

“I can’t- my head hurts. I can’t deal with moving out right now.” Victor hears the ache and fatigue in his voice.

“Lilia and I will deal with it.”

“You haven’t even talked to her.”

“I don’t need to talk to her to know that she’ll help. She cares about you. Not just cares-cares; ‘ _I’_ _ll get a manicure especially so_ _I_ _can gouge the eyeballs of_ _those_ _who hurt_ _my kid_ _with_ _my_ _bare hands_ ’ cares.” Yuri understands this kind of care; he, too, is the eyeball-gouging type. Maybe that’s why he trusts her implicitly. “I was cautioned I’m on top of her list just yesterday.”

“Hn. I like that.”

“Me, too. I’m glad you have trustworthy people on your side.”

“You would; lets you off the hook.”

“Nah. More like, you’re mine and I’m a selfish fuck,” Victor murmurs into Yuri’s hair.

Unexpectedly, hands are grabbing at his shirt, releasing, going for his hair. “Kiss me, you asshole, fuck,” Yuri says but doesn’t wait for Victor, just drags him down, loose and uncoordinated, and mashes their mouths together, squirming so he can straddle Victor properly.

Victor’s always, always loved this—the snark, the passion, the anger, the drama; how it hurts but Yuri sticks to it through the pain; how he says, “Say it, say it again, say it.” And Victor does: “You’re mine, and I’m selfish. You’re mine,” then reaches down for his dick.

“Suck me. Suck me, bitch, you promised,” Yuri says even as he thrusts into his hand, and yes, Victor did promise—so he flips Yuri until he’s lying on his back and goes for gold.

He’s trying for steady and thorough but Yuri’s not having it; he bucks into his mouth, clutches the sheets, cries out. Victor stops and grips the base of Yuri’s cock because he’s an evil piece of shit—which Yuri let him know in a colorful string of profanity.

“Shhh,” he says. “I’m doing to take my time and build it up so you can try to sleep a little more after.”

“Please,” Yuri says and spreads his legs, one arm over his eyes, brows furrowed. Victor teases his hole with a thumb, his other hand still gripping Yuri.

“You’re out of lube.” He did his best to salvage the dregs of it yesterday; he knows there’s none left.

“Butter. Cooking oil. Hand cream in my bag. Whatever,” Yuri says, trying to get his breathing under control.

“Do _not_ touch while I’m gone. I’ll know.”

Of all the options he’s been given, the easiest to find is the butter—“my bag” isn’t very useful information when it’s World War III on the floor and there’s at least six bags mixed in the carnage. But on the fridge door, there’s a half-used stick of butter that looks like it’s been there forever—and yup, Victor’s gonna have fun with this.

He brings it back to the bedroom and shows it to Yuri, who’s grown a little soft and is glaring at him like he might be getting a presentation score. Yuri turns his head to the side—just in case there was a doubt that he’s Displeased with the change of pace. Too bad: Victor knows the magic word now, and he will use it.

He sits on the bed and leans over Yuri’s exposed ear. Nuzzles it. Nibbles. Lick and makes it all wet, then blows on it just to see Yuri shiver. Sucks on the lobe, kisses under. Growls, “You’re fucking mine. I’m a selfish asshole, and you’re _mine_.”

Yuri moans and turns around to kiss him, pressing himself into Victor’s thigh as tight as he can. Victor can feel how hard he is, again.

Victor wants it—wants to fuck Yuri until he leaks, wants to goad Yuri into fucking him, wants to feel the unbridled fierceness that makes space for him to be fierce back—wants to be raw need. Wants, but can’t have: Lilia will be back with the groceries soon, and he growls in frustration as he start grinding their dicks together.

“Fuck me.” Yuri moans and grinds back, lips plump, pupils still dilated. “Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me, c’mon, where did you even put that butter-”

“Lilia-”

“Hard and fast, we can make it, c’mon, fuck I’m close, fuck-” Yuri says and pulls away, flops on his back: tangled hair, heaving chest, dick still hard and pointing up. Victor looks, and thinks, _Mine—_ and Yuri looks back, raises his arms above his head and folds his legs open—and fuck this, Victor’s going for the stupid butter on the nightstand, softened by now, and digs in it with a finger: once to press a glob into Yuri’s ass, once to smear some on himself.

“It’s Okay if it’s rough, c’mon, put your back into it-”

Victor does; grunts as he presses in, impatient. Yuri hisses a long “yesss,” curves his back and meets him half-way until Victor is in so deep, as deep as he can be, because _mine_.

Yuri sighs, then; tries to relax around him as he pulls Victor’s still buttery hand to his cock and says, “Go for it, c’mon, finish inside me, I want to _leak_ by the time you are done.” Victor fucks in, as hard as Yuri’s barely prepared asshole would let him, and makes sure that the hand on Yuri’s dick doesn’t let off for a moment. Yuri keens and fucks himself back, ungainly and fierce and free. _Love this,_ Victor doesn’t say. _Love you._

Somewhere in the living room, Lilia clears her throat—fuck, he didn’t lock the door behind her, did he, fuck—but he can’t stop; Yuri pulls him in with a heel and he grinds in—and this is the best part: when he comes into Yuri. When Yuri comes into him.

He doesn’t pull out; just looks into Yuri’s eyes, still breathing heavily.

“Stay a while, just want to feel your weight over me,” Yuri says quietly and pulls him close. Victor holds him, eyes closed.

“I should go get something to clean up,” he whispers eventually.

“Nah.”

“The sheets-”

“Screw the sheets. They’re my sheets; I’ll leak truffle butter on them if I want to.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _humps your leg drunkenly_ (y/n), please be my beta-

Victor closes the bedroom door to a sleeping Yuuri and goes to face Lilia, feeling a little like a teenager that’s been busted making out with his boyfriend. She is so stern that on some level, he can’t help but expect a lecture.

“Is he asleep, then,” is the only thing she says.

He nods.

“There’s coffee.” She’s already sipping from one mug, so he goes to fill another. He sits across her at the kitchen table. Between them are three rolls of garbage bags.

They are silent while the caffeine works its way in, trying to kick his brain into gear.

“He needs to move out of here,” he says eventually. “He can’t afford it. He has no savings, if something were to happen.”

She nods.

“I’ll need to get boxes, packing supplies. Call movers. Clean up this place, get rid of the trash, put his things into storage.” He thinks aloud. “Get any mail that he’s got downstairs. His bills are mostly electronic, but there might be something important.”

She listens, focused. “I’ll handle the mail and the movers. You’re both household names; if Victor Nikiforov went to the front desk and ask for Yuri Plisetsky’s mail, then came back with storage boxes and put two trash bags of codeine packaging in the hallway, the papparazzi would have a field day.”

Makes sense.

“You will, however, pack and clean.”

“Of course.” Hadn’t occurred to him that he wouldn’t. “I’ll call the rink and my husband, arrange to bring him over to Hasetsu. It’ll be easier to have a change of surroundings; anything that makes it hard for him to get more pills helps.”

“You’re bringing your lover to your in-laws place.”

Yes, he was. “And I’m asking Yuuri to take a week off and fly over.”

She studies his face. “This sounds like a disaster.”

He didn’t know why he would expect her to mince words. “I thought you should know,” he says.

“Okay. I’ll talk to him.” This right here is why it’s such a relief to have her in on this. She knows what he’s telling her; he can rely on her to let Yuri know that she’ll support him through the fallout even without having to ask. At some point today, while he’s out trying to see what to do about Yakov, she’ll probably tell Yuri there’s a room at her place with his name on it, just like there’s been since he was fifteen, and to call her if he needs to.

“Thank you,” he says.

“I’m not doing it for you.”

Victor knows this. If it were up to her, he doubts she’s have chosen him as Yuri’s partner. None of them would have chosen this—well. None of them apart from Victor, who grew up as a Living Legend—strong and selfish and entitled and used to having it all being his due for putting in the work.

*~*~*

“Yuri needs to get out of Russia for a couple of weeks. Two, maybe three.” Victor says into his phone once the customary catching up’s been done. “Can I bring him over to Yuutiopia?”

There is silence on the other end of the line as Yuuri puts two and two together. It really isn’t that hard to figure out that something’s wrong. It’s the middle of the training season; it’s Hasetsu and not Denver, where they’d be going if this was about skating. It’s the tone of Victor’s voice, and what he’s not saying even more than what he is.

“I’ll call my parents,” Yuuri says, coming through—just like that; simply, easily, without question. “You should call them, too. Would you need anything special? Do you want Nishigori to come pick you up from the airport?”

Victor doesn’t know what’s happening inside him. Part of it is relief, part of it is gratitude, part of it is love, but more—the sense that he is known, and cared for, and he can rely on his husband, no matter what.

“You should fly over, too, for about a week or so,” he says. Maybe it would be better for Yuuri to be around his family and people who love him. Victor’s never had a family like that, but he imagines it would help.

“I… do I need to worry.”

Victor knows Yuri means, _is everything Okay, are you both Okay, what is happening,_ _why do you need me there,_ _is it bad_. “No. I’ve got it. It’s Yuri’s thing; it’s not that big of a deal, but it’s also not for me to share.”

“If there’s anything I can do-”

“You’re doing it now,” Victor says softly. “It’s just… it would be nice to be together again. To have you with me.” It’s completely true, and the greatest lie of omission of all.

Yet, Victor doesn’t say, _I’ve got something to tell you._ Not yet. That’s is not a conversation that should be had over the phone, and if he were to drop a line like that then refuse to explain, it would only make Yuuri fret and overthink; spin theory after theory without real information.

“Allright. I’ll make arrangements and I’ll text you,” Yuuri says. “But you call Mari nee-san, too, yeah?”

“Yeah.” There’s a _thank you_ in his tone, and Victor knows Yuuri hears it, even if it hasn’t been said. “How is Minami, will you be able to take time off?”

“He’ll be allright. He can send me footage to review while he’s sleeping.” True—occasionally, time zones could be convenient like that. “He can probably handle the juniors, too—one week should be manageable; he’s been saying he wants coaching experience anyway.”

They don’t say “I love you” for bye at the end. Victor has tried—they live in Denver and all the Americans do it—but it freaks Yuuri out. You live your _I-love-you_ s in Japan; if you say them, something’s wrong—if it weren’t, why would you need to affirm a love that should be assumed?

It’s how for the second time today, Victor wants to say _I love you_ but doesn’t.

*~*~*

On the metro on his way to Yakov’s, Victor sits and stares at the ads. He finds he misses Yuuri, and it’s not a normal missing—his eyes slide over the couple in the seat in front, her head leaning on his shoulder, and Victor realizes that he is afraid. It’s the oncoming freight train feeling again: things will change, and there’s nothing he can do to stop it. Even if miraculously it all ends up OK, there would be no more of _this_ —Yuri waiting at arrivals, all teeth and spite, wanting to claim what is his, being obscene and gritty and real; Yuuri trusting him implicitly in quite this way.

Maybe there would even be no more of Yuuri, and that-

Victor stops. _Tells himself_ to stop; makes it so, because there’s nothing he can actually do if he follows this line of thought but choke around the lump in his throat.

Tells himself, O _ne foot before the other._

_Refuse to lose faith._

Being scared reminds Victor of Yakov, who used to made him sit on the bleachers, eyes closed, and imagine exactly how he wants a jump to go; see it in his mind, feel it in his body, over and over, until it’s half-muscle memory before he even starts jumping.

He does the same thing now—even with his entire body tense, fearing a fall, he closes his eyes and makes a wish: he wants them both. He is selfish, he’s an asshole, he wants to have his cake and eat it, too—and he refuses to give up. His life with Yuuri is everything he’d wanted when he’d said yes, he’d made it so; carefully, while Yuuri focused on his skating, he set up the house, the rink, the job, the passports and the marriage licence. They had careers that were fulfilling without being stressful; they had a good income, they had time for each other. They hadbackrubs, and cuddles, and _shit,_ _toilet paper’s out_ _, pass me a roll._

He imagines his life with Yuuri, then imagines Yuri in it—doesn’t know how, not yet: somehow—and he lets the sense of it seep in his bones, having them both by his side.

It feels suspiciously like he isn’t running anymore.

Like he’s being whole.

He can’t quite make sense of it.

He remembers Yuri at the airport hotel, clawing into him and fucking, asking, _D_ _oes he even know you?_

*~*~*

Victor’s stop rolls around so he gets up, one of only two people to exit the train, half-empty in the middle of the day. From Yuri’s all the way out to Yakov is forty minutes on the train, and then another twenty walking. Victor’s feeling weirdly pensive—like someone’s taken a rod and dipped it into his carefully sedimented psychological shit, then stirred. He’s a little pensive, a little off-kilter.

He could have taken a cab out to Yakov’s, but as always, he walks. It’s grey around him: potholes, puddles, dirty snow. The space between the buildings looks deceptively pristine. It makes Victor wonder what Yuuri would think if he were to come here once the snow has melted and the litter in the half-bald grassy areas between buildings visible in its full glory. When you live here, you get used to it. Victor had certainly never noticed how the cracks in the pavement widened and the paint peeled a little more by degrees while he lived in Russia. He’d needed the sanitized cleanliness of hotels and the artificial order of his own apartment, maintained by a professional housekeeping company that came in twice a week. Later, he’d needed the well-swept streets of Hasetsu with its small-town charm, the traditional-style decor of visitor-ready Yuutopia, the cozy opulence of their house in Denver with its manicured lawn.

Now when he walks here, he actually sees.

Yuri wouldn’t come to this neighborhood, not even to visit. They are neither of them going back, but somehow, Victor always returns.

*~*~*

Three days later, they’re sitting next to each other in front of their gate at Sheremetyevo, waiting for check-in to begin. There’s a business card in Victor’s pocket ( _Ekaterina_ _Sergeevna, Family Law_ ), Yuri’s BMW is at an indoor parking garage, and twelve boxes of belongings are at Lilia’s. In the end, it turned out that Yuri owned very lettle—it’s just that all of it had been strewn around the floor. Two suitcases have been checked in to arrive with them at Hasetsu; Victor’s got his check-in luggage and Yuri—an obnoxious leather backpack with studs, this time some actual designer brand and not a faux leather Made-In-China knock-off.

Yuri himself is vertical, which is an improvement over the miserable bundle he’d made for the last two days. He’s got dark circles under his eyes; he’s wearing his skinny jeans and his messy hair is hidden under a leopard hoodie. Somehow, he manages to look both strung out and delectable at once.

He is also cranky as fuck.

“Stop fucking staring at me.”

“You’re here. I’m taking you with me,” Victor says softly. _One foot in front of the other._

“Is this the sort of crap that flies with your sad pig of a husband? Don’t know who you take me for, but I’m not that dumb.”

“I want to suck you off in the bathroom,” Victor says, because it’s the kind of thing he’s always said when Yuri’s hurting like this. “I wish you could sit on the counter so everyone could see. Would you like that? Knowing that everyone could see you me with your cock down my throat, fucking gagging for it.”

Yuri shifts and slides a little in his seat, and ups the ante, grabs for the distraction like he always does They’ve got this dysfunction down pat, both of them. “Why don’t you drop down right here,” Yuri glances down at his crotch. His hard cock strains against the tightness of the skinny jeans.

Fucking twenty-year olds, coming out of an opiate addiction and getting hard and the drop of a hat, and fuck Victor’s mouth for watering just from looking. He wants to. God help him but he really, really wants to—right here, in front of their departure gate.

Victor closes his eyes and sighs deeply. He breathes in again. Breathes out.

“Leave him out of it,” he says eventually. Then, just when Yuri’s about to open his mouth and retort, “No, really. Put the fucking blame where it belongs. He didn’t take you away from me. _I_ left you behind for the sake of my career. _I_ used his infatuation, and got closer to you and dangled it in front of his face so it would bite better when I start favoring him over you.

“And then I fell for him, and when he proposed to me, it was _I_ who said yes. And every time I take the plane back to Denver, I do it because I want to have my cake and eat it, too. So. Call me a piece-of-shit asshole all you want—it’s the actual truth—but keep him out of it. He took nothing from you that I didn’t give him.”

“Did you tell _him_ that, too?” Yuri bites out and crosses his hands.

“Not yet, but I’m bringing you there with me, am I not. And I promised, this time I’m sticking around. It’s coming out, whether I like it or not. And when it does come out, I’ll remind him that you didn’t book my tickets and force me on the plane to Moscow. I did that. You’re hot and young and brilliant and absolutely vicious—and I love every minute of it—but if I’d wanted to stay faithful to him, I could have said no, and I didn’t. I’m with you because I want to be. And I’m married to him because I love his guts. So. Put the blame where it belongs.”

“You fucking asshole,” Yuri chokes out.

“Better.” Victor says.

“You absolute, piece of shit fucking asshole.” Yuri says and wipes at his face. “You manipulative, egotistic, selfish fuck.”

“Yeah.” Victor says and puts a hand on the back of Yuri’s neck.

*~*~*

They end up in the toilets anyway, carry-on luggage piled next to the wall and Yuri crying quietly in Victor’s arms—and feeling absolutely mad at himself for it. He’s turning the vitriol on himself, muttering “You stop crying, you pathetic fuck,” into Victor’s shirt, and Victor cannot watch.

“You’re not a pathetic fuck, it’s the pills,” he says and pets his hair. “This is withdrawal, I know you wouldn’t be like this otherwise.”

“Whatever,” Yuri says and wipes his eyes angrily. “Don’t fucking pity me.”

“I’m not pitying you. There’s this thing called downregulation, I read about it when I was quitting; codeine is psychoactive and too much of it causes brain receptors to shut down—so when you quit cold-turkey, there’s too few receptors open so you feel like crap.”

Victor goes on, tone low and even, fingers buried into Yuri’s hair under the hoodie. “Then there’s state-dependent memories; basically, when you’re at a traffic light, your brain will pull up what it knows about traffic lights. When your happy chemicals are low, your brain’s gonna pull up the most crappy, depressing memories that connect to this particular state. I was the same fucking mess every time I tried to quit cold turkey; it’s biology, it’s not you; you just have to last through it.”

It seems to be working; the pseudo-scientific babble’s distracted him a little. Thank fuck.

“Here, they’re going to call our flight soon, we need to go,” Victor said and bent down for his carry-on bag. “C’mon.” He gets Yuri’s backpack, too, and slings it on the same shoulder.

He puts his other arm around Yuri and leads him out.

*~*~*

Their seats are next to each other—an aisle and a middle, which Victor took. Yuri’s eyes are closed; he’s probably exhausted from crying on top of being four days into cold-turkey opiate withdrawal. Victor puts a hand on his on the divider bar, and squeezes Yuri’s.

A new tear runs down Yuri’s cheek.

“You’re OK,” Victor says quietly and puts his arm around Yuri’s shoulders. “You are strong. You can do this. Lean on me and nap a little.”

“Stop it,” Yuri whispers, hurt and angry. “Fucking stop it.”

“Here’s another thing for you to know,” Victor says. “I’ve told many lies of omission, both to you and to him. But every single thing I’ve actually said to you was true. So, right now? I’m not playing you, I’m not pitying you, and I’m not lying. This is real. You matter to me, and I want you in my life. I’m not letting go. I’m coming clean to Yuuri and I’m facing the music.

“When we get to Hasetsu, shit will hit the fan, and it will hit the fan spectacularly, and at a time when you’re going through withdrawal and you’re at your lowest. So I want to ask you: stay with me through it. I know how much it will suck, but I also know how strong you are. So I want you to trust that even if things are going badly at any one moment, I will be fighting to keep you, and to keep this.”

“But you’re not going to leave him.” Yuri says flatly, his eyes still closed.

“No. I’m not.”

“What am I supposed to do, then, make nice? Watch you fucking-” Yuri chokes on his words again.

“Just keep the blame where it is,” Victor says.

Yuri takes in a shaky breath. Lets it out. “Fine,” he says, defeated. “Fine.”

Their fingers intertwine on the armrest: Yuri’s smooth and pale ones, and Victor’s rough ones, wedding band glinting in the artificial light of the plane.

  


 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I promised that Yuuri will find out this chapter, but, um, have some blowjobs first?

“I don’t want them to know before Yuuri does,” Victor says as they wait for their suitcases at arrivals.

Yuri’s hands are in his pockets, his shoulders slumped. “Whatever.”

“Can I rely on you?” It comes out tetchy, even though he doesn’t intend it to.

“Sure.” Yuri deadpans. “I’ll act like you haven’t been fucking me for longer than you’ve been married to their son. Anything you need.”

In Yuri-speak, he’s not happy about it but he’ll do it. Good enough. “Thank you,” Victor says quietly. Yuri just huffs.

They meet Nishigori outside. Victor smiles and makes small talk, helping with the suitcases, while Yuri stands to the side. It doesn’t seem strange to anyone when Victor goes for the front seat and leaves the back for Yuri, who takes advantage and mumbles excuses about being tired and curs up pretending to sleep.

It’s weird, smiling and waving his hands and keeping Nishigori talking. Thank God the guy has kids—parents never seem to tire of talking about kids. The girls are, apparently, Trouble—Victor doesn’t know how it came as a surprise to anyone that they’d be right terrors at fourteen. All three do ballet with Minako and help out at the rink, so Victor gets a good twenty-plus minutes out of talk about whether they have any plans to compete.

He thinks they should: they’d do fairly well at the regional level even without training too seriously. And if the taste of success inspires them to spend more time on the rink and less time sneaking out to smoke behind school, all the better. “I used to try into get into the exact same kinds of trouble,” rants Nishigori. “We even used to hang out at the same place, in the little alcove the stones make, below Nakamura Seiko’s noodle shop; I don’t even know why they think they’ve discovered the wheel.” Victor laughs politely, amused by small-town geography. You say, “at the stones,” and everyone knows where that is. From there, it’s no trouble at all to get Nishigori to talk about his teenage shenanigans for the next twenty minutes.

Victor makes the appropriate noises even though Nishigori’s told him half the stories already and he knows of the other half from Yuuri. Victor likes Nishigori—he’s a really good guy, and is further giving them a ride, besides. But in the end, Nishigori is boring in the way small-town people often are. Keeping the ball rolling gives Yuri an out—and the little shit takes it, applying himself to the “I’m asleep” act with a vengeance—but to Victor, the ride feels interminable.

As they approach Yuutopia, he realizes he’s actually glad for the distraction. He knows he has no rational reason to be nervous—it’s not like they’re wearing matching t-shirts saying, “We fuck”—but he is. A lot rides on how he plays this so he hopes he isn’t going to get it wrong.

It’s mid-afternoon when they finally roll to a stop. Victor greets his mother in law with a smile, then helps Nishigori with the bags from the trunk.

Yuri sleepily tumbles out of the back seat, huddling under his hoodie, and looks like he’d rather be anywhere else. When Hiroko and Nighigori disappear inside, he trails behind. “How can you just...” he mumbles and pulls on his sleeve.

Victor knows what he means. How can you be so Okay with this; how can you just act normal, smile and nod and say the right things at the right places regardless of what’s going on for you. How can you seem to be so effortlessly on top of things.

 _I can because nobody else will do it for me_ , Victor wants to say. “Stand tall,” he says instead, in Russian. “None of this is your fault. I did what I did and then I invited you here. If there’s heat, I’ll take it. I’m not throwing you under the bus. C’mon.” Victor nudges him towards the door.

Yuri sighs and picks up his backpack and the two plastic bags of duty-free booze that they bought for Katsuki senior. Victor can’t see his face under the hoodie, only one bedraggled strand of hair that’s escaped its tie.

“Yuri.”

They share a look. Yuri still has circles under his eyes and looks kind of dazed and out of it. “It’ll be Okay. If worse comes to worst, there’s Chris. You’ll be fine. _We_ ’ll be fine.”

Yuri doesn’t say anything, just squares his shoulders and walks in—then holes himself up in his room as soon as he can get away with it. Thank god Mari’s not around: she’s the one to watch out for, with her sharp eyes and even sharper mind.

Victor talks to Yuuri on the phone, helps out around Yuutopia, and drinks duty-free Johnnie Walker with his father in law after dinner. The next morning, he goes over to see the triplets skate like he’d promised Nishigori.

He’s back to Yuutopia around noon, still trying to dodge Mari (thank god for customers that keep her busy), when Hiroko comes to him, empty food tray in hand.

She looks at him and says, “I brought that boy miso soup. He doesn’t look Okay.” It’s a statement, not a question.

“Painkillers.” Victor says simply. He owes her that much. “We don’t train like others do, in Russia. He started doing quads even younger than I did. It jars your knees every time you land, then rattles all the way up your spine.” He wants her to pity Yuri—doesn’t want her to blame him.

So far, it kind of works. Hiroko nods, easily extending to Yuri the compassion she has for her own son, just like she’d extended it to Victor all those years ago. “I’ll tell Niigata sensei not to sell him any.”

“Yurio wouldn’t want people to know.”

“I went to school with Niigata Keiko. Niigata Kenjirou comes here to soak when his back hurts,” she says as if it explains anything. Maybe it does, to someone from Hasetsu. She rolls her eyes at Victor. “We can trust him,” she says simply.

If it’s enough for her, it’s going to have to be enough for Victor. Nine years into it, he still doesn’t get how the people of Hasetsu just have each other’s back even though he’s seen it for himself—even though it now extends to him.

“Thank you,” he tells her. “It’s different, in Russia. If word got out, it would be all over the tabloids.”

She rubs his back with a hand. “Don’t worry about him. He’s young, he’ll be alright in no time. We’ll take care of him here.” _We’ll take care of you, too._

Whatever it is that Victor feels must be all over his face because she puts down the empty food tray and hugs him to her chest. He hugs back and tries to remember when a parent figure last did this for him. Yakov used to rub his back before going on the ice in juniors—maybe then.

“You should go check up on him,” she says as she pulls back. “Make sure he eats and tell him that he’s not a burden.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I should,” he says and goes, his emotions a mess.

*~*~*

He finds Yuri curled in a ball, back to the door. His soup bowl is empty, so that, at least, is good. Victor doesn’t ask him how he feels; the answer is probably “like crap.” Instead, he sits next to him, one thighpropped against his bony back, and buries his nose in his cell phone. There’s a text that’s been sitting there for the past two days that he hasn’t replied to. It’s from Chris and it says, _How’s it going?_

Victor stares at it some more, and still doesn’t reply.

At one time, Yuri cries. Victor puts one hand on his shoulder until he settles. With the other, he scrolls down his Instagram feed. He feels like Schroedinger’s cat, suspended in the moment before the box opens, about to find out if he’s dead or alive.

“They’re so kind to me,” Yuri says quietly, out of nowhere. Victor knows: they are so kind to him, too. But he says nothing, because this isn’t about Victor. He caused this—he’s got no right to make Yuri, Yuuri, or his in-laws console _him_.

After a moment of silence, he allows himself just one moment of indulgence, voice as quiet as Yuri’s: “If he leaves me, will you stay with me?”

Yuri says nothing.

Then Victor hears him cry again.

Then take a deep breath. “When’s he coming in?”

“At four. I’m picking him up from the train station.”

Yuri sighs, then uncurls and sits up. He looks at Victor. “One last time. I’ll be quiet.”

Victor thinks about Yuri with his legs in the air, on a futon in his mother-in-law’s hotel, and feels heat pool in his groin.

He can’t decide—he wants it slow, kissing everywhere; he wants it fast, drinking in Yuri, dirty and free; he wants Yuri to push him down, mash his head in a pillow and take what’s his. He wants it all but knows it won’t be enough even if he gets it: even if he and Yuri spend the next three days in bed. He can’t—he’s not ready to give this up, not any more than he is to give up his husband.

Suddenly, he’s thankful to Yuri for not asking, “If you had to, who would you choose?” He doesn’t want to answer, doesn’t like how the honest answer is, “I’ll promise whatever it takes, then start scheming how to get you in bed again.”

“What would you like?” he asks instead.

“Get naked and lie down.”

“Front? Back?”

“On your back.”

Victor gets up and starts undoing clothes. He doesn’t make a show of it—just makes a pile, tops it with his socks, and lies like he’s been told. “Arms?” he asks.

“Like that is good. Just let me-” Yuri says and crawls over him.

What follows are probably the four weirdest minutes of Victor’s life. Yuri’s entire body language changes: all the edges melt away. Victor’s being pet andhis neck licked; the tip of Yuri’s tongue flutters over a nipples. The very tips of fingers ghost down Victor’s sides. Yuri kisses him with eyes closed and lashes trembling, gasping softly into his mouth, trailing fingertips down his sides. He tells Victor that his hair is silky and soft, calls him dear and darling and sweet, and what the actual fuck—Yuri Plisetsky, crown prince of vicious little shits, appears to be going for a BAFTA in Vanilla, and it’s creeping Victor out.

He reaches between Yuri’s legs and findshim completely and utterly soft. “No… no, fuck no, don’t do that,” Victor says and pushes Yuri off.

Yuri is… Victor doesn’t know what Yuri is, just that it’s not good and it’s all over his face. “Why shouldn’t I do it, huh?” Yuri whispers as fiercely as he can while still staying quiet. “I can be everything he can be; I know I don’t have a nice friends and family to welcome you, but I can give you everything I have; I can work hard and I can be tender; I can be boring and slobber over you and call you cheesy shit-”

“Fucking- shut up. Shut up and come here,” Victor stands up and pulls Yuri towards him. “This is precisely why you shouldn’t do it, you idiot—not that you shouldn’t do it to me; you shouldn’t do it _to_ _yourself._ ”

“What if I want to? What if I’m ready to make any sacrifice it takes, like I’ve always been, why isn’t it good enough-”

“It _is_ good enough, you idiot, it _is_ ,” says Victor and takes his face in his palms; kisses his hair, his closed eyes, the tears that run down his cheeks. “Just, believe it, believe _me_ I’ll do my best to keep you-”

“Why am I here, then?” Yuri pulls back, angry. “Why did you have to bring me here, why did you have to tell him, you know very well how it’ll go; he’ll say, “Him or me,” and I know it won’t be me, it’s never me, not with you and not with Otabek, I know that, I’ve learned to live with it but why did you have to,” Yuri hiccoughs, breath hitching in his throat, “why do you have to-”

What did that idiot Kazakh do. “Yuri.”

“-why do I have to be here where I am alone and have no one; where I’ll be the first person kicked out-”

Jesus Fucking Christ. “Stay strong for me, Yuri.” Victor says with a surety he doesn’t feel, grasping Yuri’s shoulders. “Stay strong. I told you: it will seem impossible, it will look like there’s nothing ahead but pain, but trust that I am fighting to keep you. Trust me.”

Yuri can’t, and Victor can see it in his face. “Fuck my mouth, you brilliant thing,” Victor says and reaches down into Yuri’s sweatpants. “Show me who I belong to.” He cups Yuri’s soft dick with one hand and just holds while he pulls him in with the other and tries to kiss him.

Yuri doesn’t respond at first, so Victor just touches their lips together lightly as he keeps cupping Yuri. Sucks in Yuri’s lower lip. Cheats—nuzzles up his neck and to his ear, and whispers: _Mine._

Yuri’s mouth opens for the next kiss, and his dick is still soft but Yuri presses it ever-so-lightly into Victor’s hand. Victor pulls down on the sweatpants and pulls back from the kiss, scoots down and takes all of Yuri into his mouth; tugs on it, pressed tightly between his tongue and his palate until he feels it grow.

Soon Yuri is bucking into his mouth, hands pulling on his hair, and yeah, this is more like it. Victor feels himself get weirdly emotional, some mix of love and sadness and longing that he can’t quite put a finger on. His hands slide up the back of Yuri’s legs to cup and squeeze his ass.

When the time comes, he swallows. There’s something about leaving come stains on your mother-in-law’s bedsheets that sits wrong.

“How about you?” Yuri says after catching his breath.

Victor is hard—of course he is—and he still wants everything. And fuck it—he refuses to settle for less than that. “Me—nothing,” he says stubbornly and gets up, pulling his briefs over his hard cock.

“Please,” Yuri says with a small voice, looking at him with soft, vulnerable eyes. “Just once more-”

“No.” Victor pulls his t-shirt on, then puts on his pants. “This is _not_ the last time. I won’t behave like it is—give up like it’s a foregone conclusion. You and I will fuck again,” he says and puts a hand on the obvious bulge in his trousers. “And this right here is your promise.”

There’s a growl deep in Yuri’s throat as he reaches and tugs at the belt of Victor’s just-buckled trousers. Yuri pulls; he wants Victor on the bed in that “this is non-negotiable” way that he has. Victor lets it happen—lets himself be dragged down to the bed, unbuckled and taken out of his boxers with a utilitarian, no-nonsense grip. Yuri gives him a couple of tugs, then just dives in—Victor goes from zero to balls deep in Yuri’s throat with zero warning or foreplay, Yuri’s throat relaxed around him. Victor hadn't known Yuri could even do that. He hadn't known it was possible to be deep-throated and have it be utterly not about you—this here is about Yuri having his dick down his thoat, Victor's pleasure a complete afterthought. 

It doesn't prevent Victor from enjoying the hell out of it and coming embarrassingly fast. Yuri swallows, too, and makes eye contact with Victor as he licks his lips.

Victor’s trying to catch his breath, still dizzy. He watches Yuri get up wand walk over to his suitcase, his head held high and his shoulders set. He rummages in and pulls out new clothes, his hair press, and a bag of make-up.

War paint.

Victor finds himself proud: Yuri Plisetsky will never let the world end with a whimper.

“Go shower and change,” Yuri says in Russian. “You’ve got a husband to pick up.”

Victor sighs.

Yuri goes on. “And if it doesn’t work out, I’ll stay with you. I mean, we’d probably be at each other’s throats in a month, but I’ll stay with you.”

*~*~*

Yuuri has a single suitcase so Victor only needs to go to the train station to pick him up. While he waits, he wonders if it somehow shows—“I got deep-throated by someone else an hour ago.” There’d always been a convenient divide before, a fourteen-hour flight to separate his two lives. Having the two of them so close—it felt raw, and a little overwhelming.

“Thank you for coming,” Victor says as soon as he sees him at arrivals. He holds him, and it feels like a relief to have him close and breathe in the scent of his hair—and fuck this, Victor is done trying to figure out the mess that is his own head.

Yuuri, bless him, holds back, suitcase left to one side, laptop bag to the floor. “How is he?”

Victor closes his eyes and exhales. Of course, that’s what Yuuri would think—that Victor’s just worried about a good friend. “Better,” he says.

“And how are you?”

“Worried,” Victor says honestly.

Yuuri rubs his back and releases him from the hug. “It’s only codeine,” Victor says quietly. “And I didn’t want to say anything over the phone, but...”

Yuuri nods. They both know what it’s like when your knees start giving out on you. Yuri will deal with the codeine one way or another, Victor knows, but that’ll be the least of his worries. He’d still have to decide whether to go back to skating with half-busted legs or to stand back with almost no savings.

“I never thanked you,” Yuuri says as they stand on the curb in front of the station and wait for a cab.

Huh? “What for?”

“I never had to deal with this, did I. I’ve only needed to trust you and focus on my skating. You lined up our coaching jobs, you arranged it so we can stay together… Retirement never caught me by surprise; it was never a time of, ‘Oh my god, what do I do next.’ And I’d never thought about it, but it’s because _you_ planned for everything: I could just relax and celebrate my accomplishments, walk into my cushy job and feel happy about how we were starting a new stage of our lives together...”

Victor shrugs. “No need to thank me. This—it’s the life I want, too.” He wraps an arm around Yuri’s shoulders and squeezes but doesn’t have time to say anything more—Yamanaka-san rolls up to them in his beaten up Honda cab and they are on their way, answering the usual, “Yuuri-kun! It’s been a while, how long are you staying?” types of questions and making small talk.

They get dropped off at Yuutopia and greet everyone who’s come to the door to fuss over Yuuri. Yuri waits for them in the living room, sitting at a low table and working on another bowl of soup. The only way Victor would know he’s got any make-up on is that he no longer looks like death warmed over. His hair’s not a matted mess, and he’s out of his sweats and in a pair of skinny jeans.

Seeing Yuuri, he gets up and walks over. They’re the same height now, so he can look directly into Yuuri’s eyes.

“Thank you for having me,” he says, voice raspy in his throat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am going to hell. If you enjoyed this chapter, I'll probably see you there.
> 
> Furthermore, I'm done with trolls. I had anon enabled so people could feel safe to discuss, but it looks like this is not that kind of fandom. I... sincerely thought better of people. I thought better of people who participate in fandom. In the end, I'm not here to be policed, and neither should be anyone else. I'm not giving these pieces of shit a voice. 
> 
> I am sorry that this would affect people who want to leave genuinely thoughtful responses but for one reason or another don't feel brave enough to comment under your original account. Know that I see you and I would have liked to talk to you. You're awesome. *hugs*


	6. Intermission

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is called _Intermission_ mainly because nothing happens in it. Yuuri still hasn't found out, and Yuri and Victor talk in a hot spring pool in the middle of the night, while everyone is asleep. That's it--all 3,210 words of it. Next chapter will be called _Intermission 2_ , and Yuuri won't find out in it either. So if you're looking for how that will play out, you are free to wait until Chapter 8.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments are closed from this chapter on. Thank you for respecting this. If you enjoyed the story, I am glad. 
> 
> ____________________  
> Warnings for really heavy foreshadowing of things that will become explicit in _Intermission 2_.

Intermission

Sometime in the middle of the night, Victor finds himself staring at the ceiling. It’s arse o’clock—two or three or something, judging by how dark it is—and no one else is awake, not even Yuuri with his jet lag.

Victor’s restless. He needs time to himself, and he needs to think. It’s been three days since Yuuri’s arrived, and during that time he’s caught up with his family, they’ve spent time with the Nishigoris, they’ve visited Minako, and Yuri has been trying to avoid them. He’s been on his best behavior, to the extent that Yuuri had commented on it. So far, the “he’s proud, he likes being seen when he’s down exactly as much as you’d expect” excuse has held, but at the same time, Victor’s been stalling.

He tells himself he’s waiting for an opening, but that’s bullshit. There’s no way something like this would just pop up naturally in conversation. And while Victor is relieved that Yuri’s hiding means he doesn’t need to stress over having them in the same room, he knows it’s high time that he gets his shit together. He needs to plan, and he needs to think.

He gets up carefully, trying not to wake up Yuuri. Barefoot, he pads out of the room and down the corridor—he’s thinking his old bones would appreciate a soak while he’s trying to sort all of this out.

In hindsight, he shouldn’t have been surprised to find Yuri already there—he’s got to leave his room _sometime._ Steam rises from the hot spring pool, partially hiding Yuri in a cloud of haze. He seems to be resting, head thrown back, with a rug on his face. His hands are hooked around the rim of the pool and Victor gives himself a moment to just look at his exposed throat, the lines of his clavicles, his shoulders…

Victor drops his green robe to the floor and goes in. Wades over.

Yuri doesn’t move, just pulls the towel off his eyes. “You… quit looking at me like that.” 

There’s no snark, edge, or profanity to the statement, where only a month ago Victor would have gotten his ass cussed out in a situation like this. After knowing each other for so long, he could even almost fill in the blanks: he’d have gotten a, _Is there something you need,_ and the twitch of a sarcastic eyebrow—or an invitation to put his mouth where his eyes are. Now there’s just resignation.

“C’mere,” Victor says as he settles down, one arm stretched out in invitation.

Yuri takes some time beforehe huffs and dislodges himself from his seat to go cuddle up againstVictor.

It feels bitter-sweet to be near, in the quiet of the night, Yuri’s head on his shoulder.

“Is it better?” Victor asks. “It’s been almost a week and a half.”

“Yeah. Though everything still fucking aches. My knees...” Yuri sighs. “I’m fucked, aren’t I. This is it.”

“Yeah.” It’s hard to have to realize something like that at twenty-five, but Victor’s not going to lie to him and tell him any different. “You could go back and the same amount of painkillers will carry you a longer way, but it’s a matter of time.”

“I hate it,” Yuri says with dull frustration.

“No professional athlete likes to face not being fully in control of his body. It’s a bitch.”

“I… Were you scared? Back then? I mean, I’m freaking out right now, and I have you, at least, and Lilia.”

“I couldn’t afford to be,” Victor says because it’s the truth. He hadn’t had the luxury to give in to his self-pity or his fear of the future.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t understand it, then.”

Victor huffs. “You? Are apologizing to me?” The guy who decided that you were an acceptable casualty in his trying to save himself, he didn’t say. “You were young, and I didn’t explain anything to you—just upped and left. You had no way to understand.” Victor plays with Yuri’s hair, twisting wet strands around his fingers.

“I still wish I could have done something for you,” Yuri mumbles.

“There’s nothing you could have done. Stop thinking about it. If you need to shout at me for leaving you, do—otherwise, let it go and focus on yourself and your plans.”

“What would you do if you were me?”

“Focus on your health first. It’s the most important thing. It’s going to be hard because a lot of it will be doing nothing so you can rest up and heal. You’re used to there always being an event to train for, there always being a clear goal, so it can be scary, not knowing what comes next. But you can take six months. You’re not just anyone: you know your shit; you have a reputation. If you want to coach, there will be people who’d want to work with you. Something’s gonna work out.”

“Will my knees always hurt?”

Victor pulls him closer. “It’ll get better once you stop retraumatizing them on a daily basis. Mine only hurt when the weather is crap, now, or if I overdo it.” He doesn’t specify that “overdo it” means spend more than four hours a day on his feet—but then he probably doesn’t need to. If Yuri stops now, that’s two or three additional years of damage that he wouldn’t need to deal with. “It’ll be Okay,” he concludes softly.

Strangely, telling all of this stuff to Yuri comforts him, too. When Victor was going through this exact same thing, he’d have been too proud to let anyone know how frightened he’d been. And even if someone’d told him that it would be alright, he’s not sure he’d have believed it anyway. He hopes Yuri believes him now.

They stay like that for a while, in silence, each of them somewhere in his own head. The water around them makes quiet noises when Yuri shifts to settle better against his side. Victor muses how, for everything that they’ve done and been for each other, they’ve never spent so much time just talking. Being quietly co-present, their defenses lowered.

“Sometimes I just want to bash his teeth in,” Yurimurmurs quietly in Russian. “And not because he’s your husband and I’m jealous, or something. Just because he’s him. I’m not going to do anything—I did promise. But he still annoys me so much, just by existing.”

Victor hums: he remembers feeling angry like that. He was never the sort of person who’d let it show—had never been in a position where he could allow himself to—but he remembers it. “Would you believe me if I told you that, me too, in the beginning?”

Yuri says nothing, just picks his head up from Victor’s shoulder and looks at him, surprised.

“I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about it.” Victor pulls him back down, close to his chest. He didn’t know if Yuri cared or if he’d understand, but he found he wanted to tell him about it all the same. “Russia – it’s a fucking meat-grinder. Just landing a spot to train with Yakov, let alone pull up to the top of the cohort–-and that on top of all the other shit. Yakov. My parents. How there was never money.”

“And here’s some guy who’s had a rink basically to himself all his life, with supportive friends and kind teachers, and parents who love him and only want him to be happy. Rink fees and a college education in the States? No problem. You’re gay? No problem. When I first came here, I was amazed at how easy he had it. But in spite of that, he’d be all, “Waaaah, I’m so so sorry, I got so nervous so I fucked up, and then the dog died so I got fat.”

Yuri chuckles.

“And you’re thinking, ‘Cry more; where I come from you wouldn’t have lasted ‘til second grade, let alone thirteen years in Yakov’s master class.’” Victor finishes.

“Yeah,” Yuri says on Victor’s chest.

“So... I thought lots of things about him in the beginning that weren’t kind.”

Yuri snorts. “I would have resented him so much in your shoes. If my future depended on some pathetic wanker and I had to kiss ass day in, day out...”

Victor doesn’t say anything to that. It’s usually how this goes: he tells himself he’s giving space to Yuri to express his frustration—but doesn’t quite admit to himself how if Yuri says something like this, Victor doesn’t have to. Someone voices the little dissatisfactions at the corners of his life, and he can return to his husband ready to apply himself to being married again.

Absently, Victor wonders if Yuri realizes this on some level. If some of his annoyance with Yuuri is, subconsciously, something he does for Victor.

“And then... I spent some time here.” Victor continued. “And I changed. Everyone was just so… you see how they are: caring. Accepting. There were the warm family dinners, how everyone just genuinely rooted for Yuuri and wanted him to succeed. I don’t know if it’s the same for you, but before coming here, I didn’t know people could be this way.”

Yuri thinks. “I had my grandpa. He could be bad-tempered but I still knew he loved me. In spite of the other shit. And then, Lilia. And you. Such as you are.”

“I had Yakov.” Victor pauses. “Such as he was. And he is definitely not tender, affectionate, and sincere.”

Yuri chuckles.

“I’m glad you have Lilia,” Victor says.

“I talked to her on the phone earlier today,” Yuri starts, and Victor feels that he should wait for him to finish. “I was telling her about how weird everything’s gotten… how we have all of these Conversations now.”

Victor can’t imagine who it would be that he’d be able to pick up the phone and tell them about the kinds of conversations he’s having with Yuri. Or with his husband, for that matter. If he had to choose someone at gunpoint, it would probably be Chris—because he trusted him not to be moralistic—or, indeed, Lilia, because he trusted _her_ to have zero time for his bullshit and self-pity.

“So she was saying, to have more. Not to let you go to Katsudon for Conversations and to me ‘cause I’m a hot piece of ass.” Yuri swallowed, nervous. “To value myself more. And to ask when I need things. Like to talk to me or for attention or for reassurance.”

Aaaand yeah—here was the zero time for Victor’s bullshit part. He hadn’t even realized he was doing it, but he totally was—he liked being wit Yuri because it didn’t feel so much like work. “You can,” Victor says in Yuri’s hair. “Or you can shout at me like always, I don’t mind. I kind of like it when you shout at me. It’s been a little weird, how polite you’ve been. Makes me worry about you.” He pulls Yuri closer and nuzzles the shell of his ear. “And you are a hot piece of ass.”

“Will you tell me, then,” Yuri pulls back and looks at Victor, interrupting his bid for onsen handjobs.

“About what?”

“What you started. About how you changed when you came here and how you fell for him. It would suck to hear, but… I think I need to see him differently. Because right now, all I can think about is that I am coming second to even that kind of wishy-washy pathetic loser, and...”

“He’s not a wishy-washy pathetic loser. And you aren’t a loser either. Listen to Lilia, she’s smart—stop thinking about how you’re less-than and put your energy into actually getting what you want.”

“I don’t even know what I want. It’s always been, what am I allowed to have—” In the middle, Yuri stops himself and takes in a big breath. Victor can actually see his eyes get that determined look with the slight frown that Yuri sports every time he’s preparing to do something difficult and high-stakes. It makes him want to kiss him right where he’s the most tense, between his eyebrows—so he does.

He gets an elbow in the ribs for his trouble. Fucking figures. For some reason, it only makes him smile.

“Stop stalling, you wanker.” Yuri says sternly still frowning and only managing to look adorable. “Share!”

Victor keeps chuckling—only Yuri, going for disclosure and relationship intimacy with his elbows first. “Okay, Okay, here is me sharing,” he says. “I think I want to tell you this anyway—I think you can use it, too. But, basically, here is what happened: I left Russia and came here to Hasetsu, and first, I was focused only on how to play things—the entire situation, with both you and him there. I was an asshole—looking back, I know I was—but at that time, I was just frustrated, both with him and with you. Here I was, freaking out and trying not to admit it to myself, trying to secure my future—and he was turning me down all over the place, and you were only making it difficult, beingyet another thing I’d have to control.”

“Didn’t you like me?” says Yuri with a small voice. “Not even a little bit?”

“Of course I did—I agreed to look out for you, didn’t I? I’d never have done that if I didn’t think you were worth the effort. I’d never have kept doing it if I didn’t think you were the best.”

“Quit feeding me Yakov’s shit,” Yuri hisses, angry.

“The part where I respected your fighting spirit and your skill as a skater isn’t shit.” Victor says levelly. “The part where I liked you and I thought you were worth the effort isn’t shit either.” The rest _is_ shit, he doesn’t deny _that._

Yuri’s eyes are closed, and he’s taking deep breaths. They haven’t talked about this before—have never, ever gone there explicitly—but it looks like they might need to, later. Blasted Conversations: all kinds of shit comes up.

“So, _I liked you_ ,” he continues. “With all of the liking I was capable of. But I was selfish. I was afraid, and I thought I had only myself to rely on. I felt like if I couldn’t control everything, I’d fall into this abyss of utter failure, and that would be the end. And it made me see people as things. When I made decisions about how to act, I didn’t consider that it might damage anyone psychologically—I only thought of how I’d make them feel in terms of whether that would be useful to me.”

Yuri is still—Victor bets he’s probably told himself something like this a thousand times: “He doesn’t care for me, he’s only using me.” But it’s different, to be told you’re actually right.

“Yura, this—about that time, who I was and what I felt—nobody knows this about me. What I just told you, I haven’t told a single soul—not Yuuri, not Chris, not anyone.” It’s a dick move—feel special that I told you what an asshole I was. But it seems to work.

“I’d rather know the truth anyway,” Yuri says and opens his eyes to look at Victor. It’s something Victor’s always liked about him: he’s brave, and he’s strong.

Victor nods. “After you left and I settled into a routine with Yuuri, I started noticing things around me more. I saw how people were treating me and each other—Yuuri, his parents, his friends. Minako. Mari. And it made me think, was this something that’s possible? Could life really be this way—simple, safe, full of guileless sincerity? Could _I_ be that person—someone with a loving boyfriend, someone who supports others and is supported in return. So I lowered my defenses, little by little. Asked Yuuri what he really needs from me with the full intention of actually giving it to him. And I felt so joyful, so free—I’d never felt like this before, not in the twenty-seven years that I’d been alive. I could just give affection and get affection back—no games, no second thoughts, so hidden intentions, nothing that I needed to be on my toes about, or always watch for.”

“So, basically you loved him for being a naive idiot—for never having been damaged,” chokes out Yuri.

“You aren’t damaged!” Victor says, as loud as he can without waking up everyone. Yuri just turns his head to the side. “Yuri—look at me: am _I_ damaged? Tell me!” Again with the deep breaths.

Victor gives him time.

“No.” Yuri says eventually.

“Then you aren’t damaged either.”

“I just can’t help thinking that if I were purer, like him, that you would have loved me.”

“I couldn’t have loved anyone back then—pure or not. Not before I left Russia and saw my life from the outside. We were talking about how at first I looked down on him, right?

"Well, here’s what happened. I was at the table one day, watching TV with his dad and drinking. We weren’t watching anything special, the TV was just making noise in the background. I was kind of staring into space, starting to get drunk on their plum sake, and it hit me: What if I didn’t look down on him? What would it mean, if I could look at someone who felt anxious or sad about his dead dog and wasn’t able to handle it right, and felt compassion?

"It would mean that people are allowed to be sad and to feel down. It would mean that it’s Okay to ask for support, even if it’s just a small, emotional thing—that when one is vulnerable, they deserve support, not derision. And from then, it was a small jump to realize how much of a struggle everything always was; how many normal human things I had been denied. Now that I felt people were looking out for me, I was flooded by all this grief about how, before this, they really hadn’t—not my parents, and not Yakov, who was really the second closest thing I had.” Victor finishes. “Shit, I got so drunk that night.”

Yuri just hugs him, then—with such simple, yet strong affection—and suddenly it’s Victor who’s crying without knowing why, and Yuri who scoots up so he can pillow his head on his chest. He doesn’t say anything but he doesn’t need to—Victor feels that he’s safe here and that he has the space to cry.

He calms down, eventually, his head fuzzy from crying and from how by now it’s probably four in the morning.

“Fucking Conversations,” Victor says, pulling back.

“Thank you for telling me about this.” Yuri says, looking into his eyes. “I won’t tell. Anyone. I promise.” His fingers are buried in Victor’s hair and Victor’s being kissed chastely on the lips, and he just—he groans, reaching out and pulling Yuri close to his chest and squeezing.

“Fucking mine,” he rumbles low in his throat—but he means it differently, this time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Maybe I should add this: the let's bitch about Yuuri thing was taken from a Russian meta somewhere on vk which argued that Yuuri is very hard to relate to for the reasons I've thrown up above--but also, that one cannot respect a person who would just let a junior shout at him, that Yuuri comes across as very self-contered because he relates to Victor as to an object of infatuation and not as to a person whose personality and inner life he wants to know about. In addition, people found off-putting how he is wishy-washy about not knowing what he wants to do at the beginning of the anime. 
> 
> In contrast to that, Yurio appears driven, focused, and much more mature at an earlier age because he has clear goals and he takes directed action to pursue them. People understood and found relatable putting up a tough front and hiding behind a mix of smart-arse profanity and aggression--I didn't grow up in Russia, I grew up somewhere else Eastern Europe, but thus far all of the above checks out, down to how people who have overcome a lot of material hardship (which most Slavs did around the transitions from planned to market economy) become really impatient with someone who is being a precious snowflake about their psychological state (this has actually bitten me in the butt when, influenced by what I soaked up while living in the West, I've tried to ask for emotional support from my friends at home). 
> 
> This chapter is kind of not so well done--the dialogue is very bare, but regardless, I feel like this, separate from being Yuuri-bashing, may be something that would actually come up in brinding the cultural divides in these relationships. Plus, as an east-west chronically culturally shocked individual, I found it fun to have Victor and Yuri talk about it while soaking in a pool. So.


	7. Intermission 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tags have been amended to include explicit underage sex, heed them. Skip this if you don't want to read about Yakov being a predator or about the first time Yuri and Victor hook up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heed the tags, peeps. Second warning.

**Intermission 2**

The paint has peeled from the metal bar in the bus, so it’s grey and cold under victor’s fingers. He’s huddled into his coat because it’s cold and his frozen feet, wet in his boots, make it feel even colder. Normal—get off the metro, wait twenty or so minutes in the cold, get on the bus, hop off thirty minutes later, walk three blocks, and he’s home. He’s used to detaching and getting lost in his head, face blank like that of all the passengers around him as he goes through the motions of getting back after practice. It’s been school and then the rink and he’s tired—and there’s still homework to copy. Alexei has lent him his homework notebook—Sergeevna had said she’d collect and check them tomorrow.

He’s in sixth grade, and he can’t wait: starting next year, he can go to the sports high school and they’re not too serious about their studies there; you go to the sports high school if you’re an actual athlete and you need to focus on practice or if your exam scores are too low you don’t get accepted anywhere else. Yakov’s told him he doesn’t need school anyways; if he trains hard and wins medals, he’ll be alright. They give you money when you medal sometimes, and after that, he can be a coach like Yakov one day. Other losers in Yakov’s junior class might need to study, but not Victor—Victor is the best, Yakov’s told him so. He just needs to hit thirteen so he’s eligible for the juniors, and then everyone would see what he can do. Victor knows that he will medal—he’s already the best in Moscow, the only serious contenders are from Dynamo in St. Petersburg, but their coach is second rate anyway—if he wasn’t, they wouldn’t all move to Moscow to sign with Yakov when they go international.

He gets battered by a freezing gust of wind as soon as he gets off the bus. He pulls his hat lower, his scarf higher, and starts putting one foot in front of the other in the direction of home. He doesn’t even need to look where he’s walking—he knows the way, he walks it like this every night: head huddled against the wind, eyes carefully on his feet. There’s ice on the sidewalk. One wrong move, and he can get injured in the lamest of ways.

He walks past the line of Moskvitches and Ladas in front of their building. Some of them work, some of them don’t but no one’s got the money to repair them or get them removed, so that’s where they stay, rotting. The door to his entrance is in a little awning—some wino’s pissed here again; winos always piss here, what else is new, it doesn’t even register any more—and Victor fishes for his keys.

There’s a panel of buzzers on the awning’s wall, to the right, but no one uses them any more—half of them are bashed in, the plastic buttons on the other half have been melted down with a lighter by whatever bored guys were stuck here waiting for someone to come down and let them in. He stares at the peeling obituaries that flap in the wind: nothing new there, either: a picture of some babushka, underneath it, “From the bereaved daughter, son, and grandchildren” and a cheesy stock poem about how your memory is indelibly stamped on our hearts, yaddah-yaddah. Well, babushkas and Anatoli Plech from the third floor, who died in a car crash because he drove when he was drunk. He had a sappy poem, too, about a bright life cut too short, something something.

Victor lets himself in and climbs the ten stairs to where the elevator is. It works or it doesn’t as it sees fit—it obviously doesn’t work when the electricity is off, and when it breaks down and Katya Petrovna can’t collect money from the residents to get the mechanic called. In the elevator, there’s piss, too—this time from the white poodle on the sixth floor that his dad hates. His dad always shouts at the middle-aged lady who owns it—what would be so hard about holding the dog in your arms until you’re out, why let it pee in the lift?—but she pays no attention. At home, his dad would rant about that dog and about how pathetic she is, thin hair permed and curled, bright-blue pencil on her eyelids—that’s why her husband left her, because you tell her and she doesn’t listen.

The elevator works today; Victor gets in and presses seven—last floor. In spite of the pee, he can’t be fucked with the stairs, not after practice. The lift trudges up. Victor scratches into the wall with his key.

He lets himself into their flat, closes the door and locks it up, and starts unwrapping himself: coat on the hanger, hat and scarf and boots with him to put next to the space heater so they can be dry for tomorrow. He greets his mom and dad. Nothing new there either: mom’s in the kitchen fixing dinner, dad’s on the couch watching the news on TV. They’ll eat—bread and beans tonight—and they’ll watch pirated American action movies from the small rental store that some people run out of their first-floor living room two buildings over. You knock out some of the wall, put in a door instead of a window, install some metal steps, and voila—commercial space. You can buy cheap vodka and smokes and chips and such there, and you can browse through grotty filing folder catalogues for a movie title that sounds interesting. His dad knows someone who runs a pawnshop and that’s how they now have an old VCR on which they watch low-quality tapes.

It’s how their nights go—they eat, they watch action movies with flat, canned Russian dubs, and Victor is in bed by nine-thirty because it’s a school day tomorrow and then there’s practice. When there’s new grades in his markbook, he gives it to his dad to sign. When there’s extra homework, like now, he skips the movie ‘cause he needs to copy. Math. Who the hell needs Math?

Sometimes, his dad rants about things that piss him off. Sometimes he says nothing. His mom usually says nothing—if she says anything, his dad’s just going to rant harder. Victor’s learned not to say much either.

He doesn’t usually talk about practice—his dad starts on how it’s time to quit this nonsense and start focusing on hockey, if it has to be something. From hockey, it’s Victor’s long hair, and from his long hair it’s on to something about how scrawny he is and how he dresses, and yeah. His mom would try to pipe up sometimes, say that ice skating is fine, that it keeps him out of trouble. It doesn’t work: Victor’s dad wants a proper son, and Victor isn’t it.

Victor asks Yakov once about switching to hockey, even though he knows he can’t—he doesn’t have the build, it’s why he got scouted for skating in the first place when the coaches from the sports high school came over to talk to them during gym class.

Yakov tells him he should work hard and be grateful—the skating program is state-sponsored so there’s no fees to pay like there are in the West; as long as you apply yourself and listen to your coach, and win, it’ll be your ticket to success in life, maybe even living abroad.

Victor’s looking forward to seeing what it’s like abroad—he’ll be in the Junior Worlds next year, he just knows it. Yakov tells him about Germany: that the streets are very clean and the hotel rooms are nice, and have big showers with shiny fixtures and tiles. Sounds cool.

Yakov tells him other things, too: things like, “It will feel so good; I can make you feel so nice, nicer than anything you’ve felt before.” Like, “You’re the best, so I chose you; I’ll give you extra attention, coach you better, give you an edge.”

Yakov’s right, it does feel good, with Yakov’s hand down his pants. “Now you do me,” Yakov says and takes out his dick. It’s not that difficult, you just go back and forth; Victor can do this.

The first time Victor sucks him off, he’s thirteen and Yakov’s dick smells a little bit like pee. Victor notes this and continues; it’s a dick, it makes sense.

By the time he’s seventeen, Victor knows exactly what this is and how to work it. He knows Yakov likes it and likes him; he knows that because Yakov likes it, he’ll find doctor’s notes for school; he’ll make excuses to Victor’s parents when Victor wants to be out late; he’ll negotiate with his teachers when Victor doesn’t quite pass Physics. If Victor’s family don’t have pocket money for him when he competes abroad, Yakov pays for a cab to pick him up from his place at the end of town so Victor can get to the airport on time, and buys them sandwiches and Coke when they wait for their connecting flight. Yakov even buys him a new suitcase once, a proper one that rolls, to replace Victor’s cloth bag that tore in transit.

Victor only needs to hug Yakov and whisper something in his ear and he gets his way, almost every time. In return, when Yakov asks, Victor stays back to do shit with him in his office.

As Victor grows older, it happens less and less. There’s drama as Yakov and Lilia divorce, but that’s none of Victor’s business. By the time Victor’s in his twenties, it’s almost stopped happening at all.

Yakov’s dick stops working when Victor is twenty-five. Victor knows this because once after practice a tiny boy from the junior class comes to him in the locker room and looks up at him, shoulders firm in a determined line, mouth flat, chin up.

“I want to blow you,” the kid says.

Victor’s first impulse is to laugh and tell him to come back in a couple of years; to teasingly ask, “Why do you want to do that?”

But he doesn’t get a chance. The boy looks at him with fierce eyes, and says, “It will feel so good; I can make you feel so nice, nicer than anything you’ve felt before”—and Victor knows _exactly_ what is going on here. He knows Yakov’s game; knows how protected he’d felt, knowing someone’s watching out for him, how confident that he’s getting the best of his coach’s attention because he’s special, he’s liked, he’s the best and he’s got something that his coach wants. Knows, too, that Yakov’s been coming to him less and less often, and that when he has, it’s been softer and softer, needing more work to keep it hard—and it’s not Victor, who’s as graceful and skilled as ever: it’s Yakov, growing older and feeling inadequate about it.

Victor can picture it: this little squirt, blond and tiny and with cheap clothes, school bag dirty and torn, feeling finally like someone might help him cross the tracks away from the wrong side of town. Then suddenly, Yakov starts seeking him out less and less often. Victor knows what he’d have done in the kid’s shoes: he’d have worried if something’s wrong, if he’s still wanted, if he might be getting replaced.

Next, he’d probably have pushed himself on Yakov, who wouldn’t have been any more able to get it up. And Yakov is many things—has his own twisted sense of integrity, his own brand of being reliable—but he’s so, so constipated: he’d have snapped at Yuri, shooing him away to avoid feeling awkward.

And little Yuri here would have gone home, would have thought about all the shit he’s heard about: glass in your skates, “tripping” down the stairs the night before competition—all the stuff little shits use to threaten each other. But even more than that, there’s getting that extra bit of focus and attention on the ice. It’s Russia, and _everyone_ is good; everyone busts their ass—if you want to win, you need every little bit of advantage you can get. So Yuri probably looked around, thought about his options, and settled on Victor, who’s got status and skill and a direct line into Yakov’s ear. Victor really was the obvious choice. It’s a smart move.

Victor feels like a mantle’s being passed on to him; it’s now _his_ turn to watch out and care and advise, listen to stories about hateful Math and Chemistry teachers and tell someone, “You’ve got what it takes; you’re the best, and you can know it ‘cause I chose _you_ when you and I know anyone would have loved to take your place. If you keep at it and you get Olympic gold for Russia, you will be fine; your life will be settled just like mine; there’s nothing you’d need to worry about—just work hard and skate the best you’re able to.”

Maybe he’s spent too much time thinking, because Yuri walks over to him, looking up into his eyes, and reaches for the elastic of his sweats. Victor grins his hugest grin; he likes the bravery and he likes the gumption—no one else from the Junior class would have even dared to presume. He likes this kid. It won’t be a hardship to look out for him.

“Well, then,” Victor says and slides his fingers into Yuri’s hair, smile smaller but still there. “Show me what you got, hm? Impress me.”

He sits on the wooden bench between the rows of lockers and looks up at Yuri.

Yuri follows him and kneels between his spread knees, pulling the sweats down and getting to work, taking all of Victor’s still soft cock in.

 

For some reason, Victor’s feeling relieved that he doesn’t smell like pee—he just came out of the shower.

It feels nice, how Yuri’s warm mouth tugs at him, so he hums, satisfied, and puts his hand back into Yuri’s hair. “Oh, this is nice,” he says as he feels himself grow hard. “You _are_ good at this.” Encourage, reassure. He’s slipping into this new mentor role already. Emboldened, Yuri works harder; Victor is too large for his mouth but Yuri uses both his hands, one on Victor’s shaft and one on his balls, and keeps sucking, nice and firm and steady. “Lovely,” Victor rumbles. “Excellent. A little faster now—yes, perfect!”

Yuri hums and looks up to meet his eyes, mouth stretched around Victor’s dick, and Victor can’t help but grin again. “Absolutely wonderful,” he says. “Squeeze my balls a little now—yesss...”

Victor comes in Yuri’s mouth without warning and Yuri swallows all, steady and skilful throughout. This was quite nice, it’s pleasurable and flattering and altogether something that he’d like to keep at. He groans and sighs, satisfied. “Let me do you,” he says.

“You don’t need to,” Yuri says matter-of factly.

“I’d like to,” Victor says. “I’m good at it, too. Lie down on the bench with your legs down to the side and let me show you.”

Yuri does, his thighs wide—fucking juniors and their flexibility—and Victor sits astride the bench, too, bending over and unbuttoning Yuri’s jeans.

Yuri is completely soft in his white, cotton boxers. Nerves. Victor would have been freaked out of his mind trying to pull a move like that, too. “Relax,” he says. “Just close your eyes and let yourself feel. I really liked what you did, and I like doing this, too. So you just lie back and enjoy.”

“Is this Okay?” Yuri says as he spreads his thighs a little wider, pillowing his head on his hands.

“Whatever feels good. I want you to focus on how it feels not on how wide you keep your legs.”

Yuri nods and closes his eyes. His thighs relax slightly.

“Perfect,” Victor says and bends down.

Yuri’s dick is pink, his skin so, so soft. Victor licks everywhere just for the joy of having that on his tongue. It smells like soap—he’s prepared for this, just in case. It’s cute, really.

Yuri’s starting to harden, so Victor takes him in properly, enjoying the weight on his tongue. Yuri gasps and bucks up; Victor chuckles around him, letting him in as deep as he wants. He looks up just as Yuri shifts to prop himself on his elbows, eyes wide in fascination and mouth slightly open.

“Told you I’m good,” Victor says, pulling off his dick.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, more, you asshole, more,” Yuri says and lies back down, and _now_ they’re talking; Victor bends back down with mirth in his eyes and goes for gold.

Yuri had swallowed, so it’d be a dick move not to. At the end of the almost thirty seconds it takes Yuri to come, Victor licks him up, tongue wide and thorough.

Satisfied with his work, Victor gets up and looks at Yuri. The kid’s got one hand across his eyes, his chest still heaving. Victor kisses his thighs, nudges his balls with his nose, sneaks his hands under his ass. Squeezes. If he remembers being thirteen right, Yuri will be ready to go again in no time flat.

__________________________

 

Victor is surprised at how effortless it is. Yakov’s taught him well in this, too. Victor makes sure the kid knows he’s got his attention, lets him know when he’s doing well. Tells him that he shouldn’t worry: if Victor wants anything, Yuri will _know_ ; if Yuri wants anything—blowjobs, or to talk—he should just come to Victor and ask. They start hanging out after practice. Yuri does homework on Victor’s floor and grouches about school. Some days they fuck and then Yuri’s in a cab on his way home in time for his curfew.

Victor remembers what having no money was like, so he makes sure to give Yuri a little extra cab money and keep well-stocked on food and snacks. Yuri tells his grandpa that eats dinner at the house of a friend from school, and Nikolai never protests—if anything, he’s probably glad that one of Yuri’s meals is taken care of.

All in all, Victor thinks he’s doing way better than Yakov.

About four months into it, Yuri comes to him, nervous. “It’s Anatoli,” he says. “He was threatening me today. Said he’s talking to some hockey guys and that they’ll be waiting to corner me.” Victor has no clue who Anatoli is, but nods and says he’ll take care of it. The next morning, he goes to Yakov’s office and gives him a hug. Whispers in his ear and looks at him pointedly. Yakov nods and pulls Anatoli over after practice.

No one bothers Yuri again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel I've been foreshadowing this like mad but no one's said anything about it? _shrug_
> 
> Still not reading comments. Shout at me later.


	8. Welcome To The Madness (Intermission 3)

He doesn’t know _why_ he got here, but he does know _how_. It’s eerily familiar: how he decides he won’t; how he’s hashed out all the reasons why staying away will be better. How he then finds himself doing little things... he intends to take just one, but he brings all the pills with him, “just in case.” He withdraws just a little extra cash—it’ll save him a trip to the ATM, later. He takes _that_ turn on his way home.

He remembers watching himself, kind of from the side, and knowing that this is his _choice_. That he can control this.

Except that, time and time again, he doesn’t.

“Just this once,” he tells himself, and buys some oxy.

He’s done the casual excuses, too—like, “Sorry, Yakov, doctor’s appointment, just a little bit under the weather; I’ll come in early tomorrow.” He’s been clean for months, and it still comes naturally: a hug, a murmured, “I’ll just go to say, ‘Congratulations.’” A kiss to the jaw.

He watches himself walk down a corridor. Take a turn.

Just this once.

There’s an extra packet of lube in his back pocket. He took this morning, “just in case.”

Victor is quiet as he enters; walks behind Yuri, standing sweaty and naked from the waist up, shiny leggings still on. Sneaks his arms around him and breathes in the musk at the crook of the neck. Something reverberates inside—want, but not just, not quite.

Yuri knows exactly who it is; bodies remember things even if they haven’t done anything since Victor took off for Hasetsu. And Yuri is furious.

“Oh, no, you fucking _don’t_ ,” Yuri hisses out as he slams an elbow into Victor’s ribs; spinning them around and smashing Victor into the lockers. “Fucking _hell no_ , you fucking asshole.”

Victor’s side hurts, so he breathes into it and stares at the _bloody murder_ in Yuri’s narrowed eyes. Still, he says nothing—just reaches into his own pocket and presses the warm packet of lube into the hand that’s pinning him by the chest.

Yuri looks down—at the squished packet; at the glinting ring on Victor’s right hand—and raises an eyebrow.

“Oh, that’s fucking rich,” he spits out through bared teeth.

Victor looks back at him steadily.

“Seriously, what the fuck.”

Victor flashes back to a different locker room; to a kid, scared but spunky, determined not to give up. Wonders why it’s _he_ who feels the need to come to _Yuri_ now. Suspects that he could answer, were he to introspect—had he not avoided it with such determination since he woke up this morning, ring on his finger.

He introspects anyway, thoughts floating up Yuri keeps peering into his eyes. As he keeps peering at Yuri’s.

He’s different, this Yuri, from the one who left Hasetsu. His shoulders and broader, his voice—deeper, but it’s not just that. It’s not just the ring either, or how right after Yuuri had slipped it on his finger, Victor had seen Yuri chumming up to the Kazakh guy. It’s Yuuri’s happy family, Yakov’s disapproval, “Let’s end it,”—it’s many little things, easily pushed away with a smile, but drip-drip-dripping on top of each other. It’s how Yuri’s the living legend of Russia now—and if he’s not, he will be—and Victor feels he needs a line into his ear.

And then it’s Yuri himself, fierce and vicious and his—because Victor’s good at lying, but not that good at lying to himself.

“Tch,” Yuri says and takes him out of the lump of feeling all these things add up to. Want, but not just, not quite. Missing. Need.

“Turn around and brace on the lockers.” Yuri says, low in his throat. “And lose the coat.”

Victor tosses it to the side like the flick of Yuri’s chin tells him to. They look at each other while Victor unbuckles his belt—there's still eye-shadow smudged around Yuri's eyes.

"Congratulations," Victor says as his pants drop. "It was an excellent exhibition."

"Thanks," Yuri says as he stands a little taller and the last of the anger drains from his face. 

Both of their faces are flat, Victor thinks. Yuri is no longer frowning. Victor has lost the perpetual smile. 

Yuri raises his eyebrow at Victor’s dick, raw and red: it’s where the first pack of lube went, earlier this evening.  


“I knew you’re fucked up, but this is like, next level,” Yuri mutters as Victor turns around.

He feels Yuri’s fingers press into him, rough and callused, the edges of his nails scraping, and it’s exactly what he needs. He’s not really hard; he just feels the press and the stretch; the sliding and scissoring. Separate from the need to get off, the feeling sits kind of wonky in the pit of his stomach. He can’t ignore those fingers; the sensations they draw from him demand all his attention, so he focuses on them; sinks in. For the first time in this last week, he feels at peace.

The fingers withdraw and Yuri grunts behind him, the slick sound of his hand as it spreads lube on his dick echoing in the room. Victor didn’t bring a condom. Could have, but didn’t. Because irrespective of what his logical mind tells him, he wants it exactly like this.

He shudders as he feels the head of Yuri’s bare cock press in, exhales as he forces himself to relax and accommodate it. He supposes he owes Yuri this, by means of apology. He owes it to let him know that Victor’s still here, in whatever this fucked-up thing is that they’ve got going on, now that Victor’s engaged, Yuri has grown, and the power between them has shifted.

Now that they’re this weird kind of equal, and it’s Yuri behind him, pressing bites into his neck.

“No marks,” Victor says—nothing that Yuuri will see—and Yuri growls, frustrated; slams into him in a way that’ll make sure that Victor will feel it, even if no one can see. Victor feels _something_ , then—and that’s where he’ll leave it, at _something_ : fuck introspection. “Come inside me,” he says.

Yuri curses—and keeps cursing, the way he’ll keep cursing every time it’s been a while, and they finally fuck, and ruts into Victor with no regard for anyone’s pleasure but his own.

Right now, that’s exactly how Victor wants it. He doesn’t want to get off. He just wants to feel.

Being grounded. Being filled. The burn.

Yuri’s fingers, as they dig into his chest. Yuri’s breath on his back as he pounds into him, thrusts faster and shallower, until he finally comes into him with a grunt.

“Hey—text me, every now and then,” Victor says as Yuri pulls out.

Yuri tucks himself into his leggings and throws Victor a packet of tissues, then picks up a t-shirt and shrugs it on on his way out the door.

Victor stands by the lockers with his pants down and feels a trickle of come leak down his leg.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kindly pls don't leave comments. I can't turn the feature off or I would have, but I can ask. If you enjoy reading this story, I am glad. Thank you.


	9. Intermission 4

**Intermission 4**

Five years into his retirement, Christophe is, absolutely unsurprisingly, only barely on the legit side of the line between skating and actual sex work. The first time Victor and Yuri visit him in Dubai after getting married, they stay at his “modest” place.

“Oh, please, it’s on the small side, but you guys are practically family, you’re welcome to my guest room,” Chris had said, debonair, when inviting them over.

Chris’ small and modest place turns out to be on the 93rd floor of Princess Tower, built four years ago and overlooking the Marina. Two of the elevators don’t even make stops on the first seventy-five floors, Victor learns from a uniformed attendant. From the panoramic floor-to-ceiling windows of Chris’ place, you can see the ocean merging into the horizon and the white crescent of the yachts moored below.

“No, no, of course I don’t have one,” Chris explains. “My boyfriend takes me out from time to time, though, especially now that both his sons are in the States for college and he can take more time off from the wife.”

“Do you guys want to go?” He adds after a short pause. “If I give him a call, I could probably swing it. He’s busy on Weekdays but he’ll send someone to drive us out.”

As far as Victor’s gathered, said boyfriend is also responsible for Christophe’s white convertible Merc—and for Christophe having a free run at the Dubai Ice Rink, where he coaches a couple of St. Petersburg cast-offs. Christophe tells Victor and Yuuri about them over diner: two guys and a girl whose visas have been arranged through some official program that awards Emirati citizenship for representing the UAE on the international circuit. The nameless boyfriend dropped a word at the right place so the paperwork could come through, and pays a good chunk of their coaching fees directly into Chris’ bank account.

“He enjoys the sport, you see,” Christophe explains with a wink. “He wants to promote it in the UAE. He finds it graceful.”

Yuuri’s curled under Victor’s arm, biting at the straw of something pink with orange slices. Their heads are close together as they look at Chris’ phone—at practice videos and pictures. The kids must have been in their nappies the last time Victor set foot at the Ledoviy Dvoretz.

“How come you can still compete with their twenty-year-old scrawny arses,” Victor deadpans over an umbrella-topped blue abomination at the Cielo Sky Lounge. Christophe is thirty-one, and that’s ancient in gay boy-toy years.

“Aaaah, but there _is_ something to be said for a mature eros who can easily supply it on demand, hm?” Chris wiggles his eyebrows. And really, who’s Victor to begrudge a fifty-year-old Middle Eastern businessman his bleached-blond, medal-winning, beefy and inveterately slutty boy-toy? Victor, for one, is glad that his and Yuri’s cocktails are going on someone else’s tab, especially at a place like this.

“You doing OK, then?” Victor asks Chris.

“Oh, yeah, yeah.” Chris waves his own cocktail, something green and orange. It, too, has fruit on the rim of the glass and an umbrella. “I’m putting cash aside—got a tiny place in Mürren, thinking of something smaller somewhere warmer, too—the coast of Romania sounds quite nice over the summer, no? Not too hot, not too expensive, close to home. What do you think? Could I tempt you guys to visit?”

Victor wants to roll his eyes, but doesn’t. Instead, he just laughs. How could anyone doubt that Christophe would land anywhere but on his feet?

It’s Yuuri and Victor’s turn, next—they talk about their house in Denver, their commute, their trainees. Minami has just signed with Yuuri, so they mention that. “Oh, I knew about _him_ ,” Christophe says with a wave of his hand. “Who do you think encouraged him to give you guys a call?”

Victor is impressed. One day, when his “boyfriend” does decide to move to younger, greener pastures, there would be a slew of skaters who either have a lot of goodwill towards Chris or outright owe him favors. What Victor doesn’t yet realize—it will take a couple more years for events to fully play out—is that two of the best skaters of the next generation, Yuri and Minami, will end up on top that list.

Chris will, indeed, always land on his feet.

Yuuri is quiet for most of that first day. He takes in the view through the panoramic windows and the fashion-plate patrons at the Sky Lounge, contributes to the conversation when Victor and Christophe try to involve him in it, but otherwise holds back.

Victor thinks nothing of it; Christophe is chill, sex-positive, and at home in his body in a way remarkable even among athletes who are naturally freer from hang-ups than most. On top of that, Chris is straightforward and completely shameless. Victor’s sweet, shy introvert of a husband wouldn’t be the first to blush to the tips of their hair. Victor’s not bothered—Chris is a genuinely decent guy; Yuuri would spend some time around him and get used to him.

Going out on a yacht sounds fun, too—it might break the ice a little to go do that. Victor suggests it and Chris walks away to make a call.

“Did you have fun?” Victor asks once they’re both lying side by side on Chris’ bed. It’s only eleven, but they’re both tired—fourteen hours on a plane would do that to you even if you travel first class and you can actually sleep most of the time.

“He’s your friend,” Yuuri non-answers and lies to his side, facing Victor. “I want to get to know him better.”

“You will, tomorrow on the boat. We’ll have slept and it would be just us, no loud music or noise. We’ll be able to talk better.”

“Do you think it’s a little, um, strange, what he’s doing?” Yuuri asks, tentative and kind of uncomfortable.

“Strange how?” Chris weirds people out in mysterious ways: he’s so unapologetically out there that you never know exactly which hang-up he’s triggered.

“This thing… with his ‘boyfriend.’ I mean, I know people do this sort of stuff, but… it just seems so… impersonal?”

Victor gives Yuuri time to arrange his thoughts.

“Like… he’s a good skater, and from how he talked about his trainees today, he’s a great coach. Why doesn’t he… respect himself more?”

Victor looks around the guest room—the French-antique-style white furniture, the chandelier, the off-white cotton sheets with obscenely high thread count. The lights that glitter out the panoramic windows. There’s a weird feeling in the pit of his stomach. Victor doesn’t know what it is, just that he wants it gone and it makes him want to… justify himself. It. Chris. Yuuri is right: Chris is an skilled skater and an excellent coach—but in addition to that, Chris is shrewd and clever, and has an excellent head on his shoulders. Chris respects himself: enough to live his life the way he likes and know that nobody’s opinion can make him any lesser.

Whoever this boyfriend is, he’s set Chris up with a nice place to live and has helped him start a decent business—and whatever their ‘arrangement’ entails, Chris knows exactly what he’s getting into. He is here by choice, and he doesn’t deserve to be looked down on and pitied.

“It’s not a lack of self-respect.” Victor tries. “Just because it’s an ‘arrangement,’ doesn’t mean you aren’t fond of each other. Think about it: someone looks out for you, chose you when he could have had anyone else, wants you to succeed in life—would it be it so strange?” He ends up telling him, then—even though he hadn’t thought it would be anything he’d ever mention. On a deep level, he’s always known it’s something he should keep to himself. But the night is warm, and he and Yuuri are husbands, still very much in love; they’ve spent the last night on a plane, and the last three hours drinking pink and blue and green things with umbrellas. So Victor is softer. Mellower. More open.

“Yakov did things to me, you know, when I was small,” he murmurs, as if that explains everything.

“Oh, Victor, I’m so sorry this happened to you!” Yuuri looks at him, earnest distress all over his face.

Victor thinks, again, of the feeling of tightness in the pit of his stomach—like he wants to rewind the last minute and avoid Yuuri’s gaze. He knows what it is, now. For the first time since all of it happened, Victor feels like there’s a wholesome, normal world out there that he deviates from. Like he’s somehow other to it, for having lived the way he has.

“Let’s not talk about it,” he says calmly. “It was a while ago. It doesn’t matter anymore.”

“If you want to, though, you know I’m here, right?” Again, so earnest.

Victor doesn’t want to.

He doesn’t know what he wants.

Two weeks later, they’re back in Detroit when Yuri calls. “I need you to look at my short program. Give me pointers on my quad axel.”

Victor’s never landed a quad axel. Yuri hasn’t either—and neither has anyone else. But it’s what they do—what lets Yuri save face since the last, “You think you can just waltz in and out of my life and I’ll spread my legs for you like some pathetic bitch in heat; get back to your fucking pig of a husband and get out of my life!”

So it’s never, “I miss you, come over.” It’s, “You owe me and you know it, bitch, so get your ass over here and deliver.”

It’s how it goes, every now and then, when Victor gets a phone call: he says yes, and he buys a ticket to Russia.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> no comments on this fic, please. thank you for reading :)


	10. Chapter 10

There’s two kinds of decisions, small and big, and when Yuuri woke up, alone, at four thirteen in the morning and the bed beside him was cold, he didn’t expect he’d need to make a big one only twenty minutes later.

He assumed that, just like him, Victor was jet lagged—flying from Denver to Moscow to Hasetsu tends to do that to a person, he thinks absently, and just as absently decides to slip into one of the ubiquitous green onsen robes and go find his husband. Victor was probably somewhere with his tablet and a cup of coffee, enjoying the last quiet minutes of the morning before the gulls woke up and delivery trucks started on their morning rounds.

Yuuri putters around the house, trying not to wake people. No Victor in the living room, or on the stone steps to the garden. The hot springs, then—and sure enough, there’s voices, low and rumbly: Victor and Yuri, speaking in Russian. Instinctively, he holds back: he doesn’t need to understand them to know it’s an intimate moment. He know what Victor's like with his defences down. Yuri speaks, now, voice open and trusting in a way Yuuri’s never heard it, ever.

It’s strange, eavesdropping on this from the shadows. Yuuri knew that they were close, but hearing it made it real in a way that it wasn’t before. “Of course it’s real,” Yuuri thinks. Victor brought Yuri here; worries about him; wanted _me_ to come. Silly of him to not have seen it sooner, really.

And then Victor starts crying.

Yuuri’s heard him cry exactly twice: once in Barcelona, at that misguided “let’s end it,” and once after Makkachin died—and that wasn’t even proper crying, just a deep breath and Victor wiping at his cheek, saying, “I’m fine, I’m fine, it’s alright.” But right now, Victor is crying for real: he sniffles, his voice wavers. Yuuri didn’t know Victor was sad about something and he should have—he, of all people, should have. He looks at the floor, and feels—confused, and guilty. But most of all, as Victor’s little hlips get muffled, likely into Yuri’s chest, he feels like he doesn’t know his husband at all.

He thinks back to another scene: Victor and Yuri at the GPF, talking and leaning on the side board, sharing the same ice with an ease that only reminded Yuuri how insignificant he was. How other.

Then Yuri moans—low and unmistakable among the sloshing of the water.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please no comments. thank you for reading and i hope you liked :)


	11. Chapter 11

His brain goes on overdrive—what was that? Was it _that_? Was it _really_? And then Yuri moans again, and Victor rumbles in his throat, and yes: it’s exactly that. So his brain goes again: wanting to run there and pull them off of each other; wanting run away and go back to their bedroom, all the while bombarding him with, _when? How much? For how long?_ Is this it? Is his marriage over, will Victor leave him, would-

What pulls him out of it is the realization that he’s hyperventilating—and this, he knows how to deal with. This is an anxiety attack, pure and simple. He’s been to therapy over this. He’s practiced, and he’s glad he did. So: stop until you have complete information, and focus on your breath.

 

 

Yuuri sits on the floor against the wall and folds his legs next to his chest. It helps with how fast his heart beats around the knot in his stomach and the hurt in the middle of his chest—in the end, he just feels faint.

Breathe.

It distantly flutters to his awareness that he may be in shock.

Breathe. Fell where your arms are. Feel your legs.

Ground yourself.

A couple of minutes into it, they fall silent. Yuuri’s shoulders relax.

A couple of beats later, his heart returns to normal, as abrupt at it had started—from one beat to the next.

He tries not to think, but he keeps coming back to the same thing: he hadn’t known. He’d had _no_ idea. Nothing in Victor’s behavior—not even the fucking _trips to Russia_ , oh God, Yuri was such an idiot-

He breathes again. Not an idiot. It’s not—should _not_ be—automatic to think that your husband would necessarily be cheating when he’s away on a trip. It’s the normal thing, to trust each other. Trust is healthy.

The thing is, Victor’s never given him cause to doubt. Never. Yuuri’s into Victor: he listens, he cuddles him, he pays attention. Victor’s into him back. They have sex. They talk. They’ve got a good marriage—Victor hasn’t given him a single indication that he’s dissatisfied, or that there’s anything he’s missing.

That’s probably the most jarring thing: this doesn’t make sense.

 _Maybe it’s just this one time_ , Yuri’s brain supplies. _Maybe he’s just humoring Yurio, taking pity on him because he’s having a hard time, and it’s nothing; Victor can promise not to, in the future, and things can go back to how they were before..._

Then Victor says something, low and tender, and Yuuri shivers.

Because this is how Victor sounds when he loves.

And Yuuri knows this because only a few hours earlier, Victor had sounded the same, in bed with Yuuri.

Yuuri takes a deep breath and relaxes his head against the wall, eyes closed. Thoughts flit into his mind. One, Victor didn’t need to bring Yurio here. They could have gone to a hotel for a couple of weeks. To a rehab. Hell, even to Detroit. Two, Victor didn’t need to call Yuuri: Victor could have picked up the phone, explained what’s going on, said, “I need to stay with him for two weeks,” and Yuuri would have been fine with it, none-the-wiser, while they have their tryst. Three, Victor was not stupid. Eight years into his marriage, Yuuri knows that Victor is a shrewd, meticulous planner, of the kind who always goes after what he wants. If Victor wanted to leave and have Yurio, he would have. And if he’s still with Yuuri, then he must want to be.

He must want things to be exactly as they are: Yuuri and Yurio, here, in Hasetsu. He must want Yuuri here for a reason.

Yuuri stares blankly at the opposite wall. He thinks.

He makes a decision—a big one, of the kind he’d never thought he’d have to make when he woke up this morning.

He gets up and ditches the robe, tossing it absent-mindedly to the floor.

Then he squares his shoulders, lifts up his head, and walks out to the pool.

 

 

He doesn’t realize the flaw in his plan until Yurio’s eyes—fit, young, peak-condition Yurio’s eyes—land on his naked body. And that’s the other thing: Yuuri may be pushing thirty-three and slightly pudgy, but Victor’s never _ever_ given him reason to think he finds him anything less than attractive.

The two of them are in the pool: Victor’s leaning against the rim, Yurio’s curled into his naked chest. Victor holds him against his side with an arm around his shoulders—an arm that doesn’t move as Yuuri makes his way into the pool, saying nothing, and moves towards them.

He doesn’t know what’s on his face, only that Victor looks at him like he just hung the moon: with that sincere astonished fascination which usually makes him say embarrassing things, like “My Yuuri!” and “Wow!”

Yuuri loves him so much—and wants to punch him in the nose. At the same time.

In the end, he sighs, resigned, and settles against his other side, and looks straight ahead.

“Here’s something you don’t get about me, Victor.” He sounds firm, determined. Victor sneaks an arm around his shoulders, and in spite of this utter ridiculousness of a situation—or maybe because of it—it comes as such a relief. “I have loved you, give or take, since I was twelve. Everything I’ve ever achieved in my life—skating, learning English—my entire competitive career—was because I wanted to be closer to you. To be the kind of person who could stand by you, shoulder to shoulder, and deserve it.”

There's silence. Victor's hand rests, comforting, on the back of his neck. Yuuri steels himself and looks at Victor.

Victor studies the side of his face.

“Being with you," Yuuri says, "loving you, getting to know you—being married to you—is the most important thing in my life. So don’t you _dare_ think—not even for a second—that I would give up on us.”

Victor looks at him with so much love and gratitude in his face. Yuuri still wants to punch him.

“And you,” he says to Yurio, whose head is on Victor’s shoulder, eyes squeezed. It’s not hard to see that he’d have bolted if it wasn't for Victor’s hand pinning him in place so hard his fingers dig grooves into his shoulder. “It’s been almost ten years. And you _keep_ underestimating me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No comments, please. Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoyed.


	12. Chapter 12

Victor’s got one hand on his husband’s neck and one digging into his lover’s shoulder. The silence stretches after Yuuri makes his declaration.

Yuuri is wrong: this is not Yuri underestimating him. This is Yuri being scared that Victor will put him out to dry. Victor won’t put him out to dry, not after he’s gone this far—therefore, the hand: showing Yuri that Victor wants him here. Showing Yuuri exactly who’s responsible for this mess.

“I can’t decide if I’m the luckiest guy in the world or the most terrified one right now,” Victor says. He relaxes his head back and closes his eyes, but his mind is anything but relaxed. This is ground zero, the most densely populated part of the minefield, and he needs to navigate all three of them through it.

“You did this deliberately,” Yuuri states. “You brought the two of us here...” His voice wavers a little.

“Yes.”

“Why?” Yuuri asks quietly.

“To come clean.”

The silence stretches some more. Victor lowers his hand between Yuuri’s shoulder blades. He’s trying to give him an anchor; a lifeline to the place where Yuuri usually looks for comfort. _We still are_ , he tries to tell him.

Yuuri sighs and relaxes into the hand. On his other side, in the silence, Yuri relaxes a little bit, too. Victor breathes in and tries to enjoy the moment—he knows this isn’t happening again, soon. But all he manages to feel is tense and slightly surreal.

“So. How long has this been going on,” Yuuri asks eventually.

Victor considers lying. Then he decides not to. “Twelve years,” he says with his eyes closed. There’s a way to spin it: shave off the off-again time from his and Yuri’s on-again, off-again thing. Technically, it wouldn’t be a lie. But.

Yuuri’s eyebrows flutter. His lips move.

Victor splays the palm between his shoulder blades. He means it to be a comfort Yuuri can cling to when his entire world is tilting on its axis.

“I… I’m not sure if I ever knew you at all.” Yuuri says quietly. “And I don’t think I could be with a person who’d do something like that.”

Yuri stands up then, naked and angry and fierce, and looks down at them. “Oh get off your fucking high horse,” he spits out at Yuuri. “There’s _one_ person here who’s entitled to judge if I was ‘too young,’ or if what we did was ‘wrong’ or whatever, and that person is _me_. You have no idea what it was like, and how if he hadn’t done it I’d probably have been peddling my ass around the night clubs for coke at sixteen instead of getting my first GPF gold. So stop thinking of me as a fucking _victim_. Keep your stereotypes and your ‘morality’ out. of my fucking. life.”

Victor’s eyes are still closed, but something small warms in his heart. _Stop thinking of me as a fucking victim_. “You wouldn’t have peddled your ass for coke,” he says as he looks at Yuri.

“No. _You_ wouldn’t have,” Yuri says and climbs up the steps to get out of the pool.

Victor sighs.

Yuuri follows Yuri’s naked back with his eyes, and keeps watching as Yuri wraps himself in his green robe unselfconsciously.

The glass door to the hot spring pool closes behind him with a slight squeak.

“We need to talk,” Yuuri says.

“Yeah,” Victor says. “Yeah, we do.”

 

_____________________________

 

He lets Yuuri go back to their bedroom first, both to give him a little space and because he needs a couple of minutes to gather his thoughts. Also, coffee. A huge, steaming mug of hot coffee would be absolutely wonderful.

A couple of minutes later, he figures he’s not thinking so much as stalling, so he makes himself get up and go (via the kitchen) to face the music.

When he gets to the kitchen, the coffee’s already running: the machine gurgles, and the air smells nice. On the table, with the sudoku from yesterday’s paper and a bowl of porridge, is Yuuri’s father.

“Have a seat,” he says as he looks up.

Victor does. He doesn’t say anything. Katsuki senior is giving him the king of look that would make Lilia Baranovskaya proud, so he doesn’t feel he could.

“I am not sure what you think you’re doing,” he says, his mouth tight, “but I want to make it clear that you and that boy are here only on the suffering of my son. The moment he wants you out, you’ll be on the street.”

Fair’s fair, Victor thinks. “Understood.”

Katsuki senior goes back to his sudoku.

“Just… if possible, please be gentle with Yuri. _I_ brought him here. None of this is his fault.”

“I’m afraid that’s not my problem.”

“Still. He would not be here if I hadn’t asked him to.”

Katsuki senior sighs. “Vitya...” he says with the air of someone who will take no bullshit, but who’s drank and watched TV with him over the years, and who’s gotten to know him—even accept him as family. “What are you trying to do?”

Victor squares his shoulders. “I want them both in the States. With me.”

Toshiya’s eyebrows shoot up. “Both of them!”

“Yes.”

“While they know about each other.”

“Yes. That’s why I called Yuuri here—to come clean. I figured that if this explodes, Yuri and I can leave and he can stay with family and people who care about him.”

Katsuki Mari putters in, dragging her slippers on the floor, a cigarette already dangling from the corner of her mouth. Victor wonders how long she’s been listening.

“That's... weirdly honorable. For a very, very stretchy definition of honorable,” she says as she pours herself a coffee. “Almost persuades me not to cut your balls off on the spot—only barely, mind you.”

She takes a drag on her cigarette. “I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: if you hurt my brother, I’ll chop you up and feed you to the seagulls.”

“I know that’s hard to believe, but I’m really trying not to.”

She leans against the kitchen counter and takes a large sip from her coffee. Her face relaxes—just the smell and taste of it is making her less grouchy. Victor sends a silent thanks to the gods of caffeine.

“In the end, it depends on my brother,” she says as she puffs, “and he’s always been a little crazy, when it comes to you.”

“I’ve always been a little crazy when it comes to him, too,” Victor says.

She closes her eyes—probably remembering all the times she’s seen them act drunk and silly, all over each other in Yuutopia’s main room. “Here’s what I’m worried about,” she says, no-nonsense. He’s always appreciated that about her: Katsuki Mari is one of the most direct Japanese people that he’s met. “I’m worried that you’ll pressure him into an arrangement he doesn’t want, and dangle the threat that you’ll leave if he doesn’t go along.” She takes a drag of her cigarette and pins him with a look. “And if you do that, I will find you, and I will end you.”

“Good,” Victor says.

“Good,” she says back, then adds: “For the record, I still think you’re mental.”

From the other side of the kitchen table, Katsuki senior nods. “Making one marriage work takes enough work—let alone two. At the same time.”

“I’m willing to put it in,” he says. “Wouldn’t have brought both of them here and caused all of this if I weren’t.”

Mari puts out her cigarette at the bottom of the sink. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but—good luck.”

“Thanks.”

“Don’t thank me. I’m still feeding you to the seagulls if you mess it up.”

“I wasn’t expecting anything less,” he says and gets up from where he’s sitting. Time to make his escape. “I figured I’ll bring Yuuri a cup of coffee,” he explains as he busies themselves with two mugs.

“Hnn.” Mari sits next to her father and pulls out her cell phone from the pocket of her robe. “Refill this?” she says and stretches out her hand, handing him her half-full mug.

Victor does and hands it back to her on the way out.

“Fucking mental idiots,” her voice follows him down the corridor.

 

_____________________________

 

He doesn't tell Yuuri that his family knows because this way Yuuri tries not to shout.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am really, really enjoying this "no comments" business. Please keep it up. 
> 
> As always, I'm glad if you read and enjoyed.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for moving the goalposts, but I seem to be able to get ~1.5k wds out at a time. Basically, there's 3 to 5k more left of the main body of the story and an epilogue--both of which have been drafted but need to be re-written almost completely from scratch because I wrote the end first and now it no longer fits the main body. Anyway: I know what happens until the end and this is getting finished within the next 2 wks. For sure for certain. With detours for #PhichitWeek and #RussianWeekend.

Yuri spent the entire day binge-watching pirated shit online, headphones stuffed as deep in his ears as they’ll go, and hating everyone. Starting with Victor.

Hating Victor is convenient like that—if you focus on how much you want to punch his face, you don’t have to think about how right now he’s with his husband, not with you, even though you need to be reassured just as much. A single fucking _text_ would be enough, but no.

By mid-morning, Yuri has managed to persuade himself that it’s only a matter of time before Victor leaves him. Yes, Victor said all of these things, but Victor’s said things before, too—and then left before following through on any of his promises. Yuri may just as well save everyone the trouble of kicking him out and go.

His suitcase is half-full of his thrown-in stuff when he starts crying.

About the only good idea he gets the entire morning is to call Lilia, who takes one hard look at him and tells him to stop feeling sorry for himself. If he needs a text from Victor, he can either text him and tell him so or he can let go. He can pack up and leave the entire situation, if he has to—but sitting there crying will not cause Victor to do what Yuri wants. You don’t magically get to deserve anyone’s love if you torture yourself enough.

Yuri is so thankful for Lilia.

But her advice would require him to either be brave enough to text, or brave enough to walk away—and right now, he doesn’t feel brave at all.

She tells him to pull out his cell phone.

In the end, he only manages to text a single dot.

It takes Victor twenty minutes to reply with, _be strong for me_.

Yuri texts back, _fuck you_ , and goes back to bawling.

  


___________________________

  


“Did Victor sleep with you tonight?” Yuuri asks the following morning, trying—and failing—to sound casual.

“No.” Yuri deadpans, and suddenly he’s fiercely, blindingly angry. Because Yuuri has Victor all the time anyway, and still he comes to rub it in. “Have trouble keeping yur husband in the marital bed, do we?”

He’s been told to be good, but it’s reflex. On the outskirts of Moscow, when you see a kicked puppy, you kick it some more—or when _you_ are down, you may start getting ideas that people will treat you any different.

That is to be naive.

That is to be _prey_.

The thing with Yuuri’s kicked puppy face is, it’s so fucking _earnest_ and _wholesome_ that Yuri can’t fucking stand it.

“Sorry,” he says—and he even means it a little. “But you stole my boyfriend of two and a half years from right under my nose, and then he fucking married _you_. I’m bitter.” And yeah, he’d promised Victor to try to keep the blame where it belongs. But it’s easier to say “you stole him” than “he left me.”

Yuurisighs, and Yuri’s grateful that at least one of them is managing to keep his head on straight. “He wasn’t around when I woke up,” Yuuri says, “and I wondered if he was with you.” Not unreasonable, keeping in mind yesterday night.

“I’m sorry,” Yuri says.

Yuuri doesn’t acknowledge it. “I thought he was at the Ice Palace first, but his skates are still here.”

Of course Victor fucking Nikiforov keeps a personal pair of skates at his in-laws’.

“Hn. Suitcase?”

The suitcase is missing, with about a week’s worth of clothing. Yuuri’s sitting on the bed, looking like he’s about to fucking cry, and Yuri? Yuri’s fucking furious.

He pulls out his cell phone and dials.

“You fucking fuck, what the fuck do you think you’re playing at,” he rants in Russian as soon as the call connects. “I’m gonna stretch your asshole double, you get me? Your back’s gonna be in stripes and your neck’s gonna be so purple it’s gonna be the color of your fucking face after I’m done punching the fucking shit out of you, I swear.”

Victor, the absolute asshole, laughs. Amused, tinkly, fond, and hearty. “Just a couple of business meetings. Nothing to worry about.”

This doesn’t make Yuri want to punch him any less. “Just… so you figured you’re just gonna up and take off, in the middle of the night, without telling anyone? Your last spontaneous decision, you fucking upped and left me – and you thought I’d take it well?” Yuri’s livid, absolutely livid. “You thought Katsudon would take it well, after he finds out you’ve been fucking someone else behind his back the entire time? You thought you’d leave me here dealing with his sniveling puppy face— you know what? _I deserve better_. We— _both_ of us. We both deserve better. You fucking wanker. Fuck.” Yuri spits into the phone, and disconnects.

“The fucking asshole,” he says to Yuuri, switching back to English.

“Yeah.” Yuuri says, morose.

“A couple of business meetings, he says. Apparently, he just got the idea. In the middle of the night. On the day after this shit explodes in everyone’s face—which was, if I can point out, _his_ _plan_.” He tosses his phone on the bed. “Fucking wanker.”

Yuuri sighs. “Did he say when he’s coming back?”

“Nope. But it better be soon or I’ll cook his balls and feed them to Lilia.”

  


___________________________

  


Yuuri’s phone pings. It’s a text. _Sorry. I need to see some people, I had this idea—if it works, you’ll see. I’ll be home soon._ _Y_ _ou’re my husband and I love you, no matter what._

 _If you say, ‘I’ll make it up to you,’ I’ll fucking kill you,_ Yuuri texts back, emboldened by Yuri’s ranting.

Hn.

There is something to it, going to _‘_ how dare you’ instead of assuming you’re unloved and left behind. Having this small, calm ‘no, this _isn’_ t OK, and I _do_ deserve better’ voice at the back of your head.

It’s a strange realization: he’s always thought of Yuri as just rude and a bad person. But maybe all this time it’s been about survival—refusing to let the world be right when it tries to take him down, and finding the strength to show them.

“What did he say?” Yuri asks.

Yuuri sighs. “That he’ll be a week, but not what he’s doing. Didn’t want to jinx his brilliant plan by telling or something.” And yeah—angry does feel good. “Asshole,” Yuuri tries, just to see how it tastes in his mouth.

“Asshole.” Yuri nods in confirmation. “Let’s go skate.”


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> writing's kind of crap, esp. towards the end of the chapter, but this fic is literally. killing me. and i want it -done-
> 
> If you mind crap writing, I'll probably re-read and edit in a couple of days: wait :)

“We should talk,” Yuri says four days later, on the way back from the rink.

There’s one thing he knows: Victor is a crafty asshole, and if Victor’s taken off, it’s for a reason. He suspects he knows what the reason is: if Victor's here, every time he's with one of them, the other would be keeping score. But if he's not, they can bond at his expense. So the asshole’s taken off and left them to it.

Because Victor said so, Yuri’s been _trying_ —which mostly means trying not to be an asshole. The skating together thing’s working out: Yuuri’s out of competitive shape, Yuri’s trying to sort out what his knees can and can’t take, but they’ve both been showing up. Neither of them's a stranger to skating off their feelings, so as their blades chisel grooves into the ice, the anger dissipates—well, kind of. At least on Yuri's part.

Yuri knows that if _his_ husband of eight years brought some snotty brat home and said, ‘take care of him for me, will you, darling,’ there would be carnage and trails of blood from where he'd drag the poor bastard’s guts all over town. So far, though, his guts have stayed where they are, and Yuuri has been withdrawn, but civil.

So, Yuri’s grateful. Also, feels like he should do what Victor would want him to and make nice. 

Thence, the offer to talk.

They end up sitting on the beach, looking out at the ocean. 

“We should talk terms,” Yuri says over the sound of the crashing waves and the gulls screeching in the air.

Yuuri tilts his head.

“Who gets to see him, for how long, under what rules.” Victor would probably want them to sort this out. Or at least try to.

Yuuri’s mouth tightens. Like it or not, though, they have to. Asshole Victor probably left them together precisely so they do—it’s exactly the kind of crap he’d pull off.

“He said he won’t leave me,” Yuri states. “And on my end, it’s been eight fucking years of, ‘I love him and I want him in my life, and I’m not leaving him for you.’ So.” Yuri takes a pebble and tosses it. “He said he’d talk to you about it.”

“He did,” Yuuri sighs.

There’s an awkward silence.

“Also, thanks.” Yuri says. “For making an effort. I’m... I’m also doing my best,” he offers. “I hope it shows.”

“I’m sorry, I just... I can’t right now,” Yuuri says stiltedly and gets up.

Yuri doesn’t follow him. He’s got quite a good idea of how it must feel to be him right now, and in his place, he’d like to be alone, too.

Maybe it's not time yet, for this talk.

 

___________________________

 

The next morning, they skate again.

Yuri doesn’t bring it up.

Yuuri doesn’t either, but he’s there. Yuri knows this for the offering it is. So after they’re done for the day, he breaks the silence as they walk back to Yuutopia.

“You should talk to him. About Russia,” he says, and feels like he’s sixteen and helping Katsudon with his quad sals all over again—it’s just that this time, he’s giving him tips on the blind spots in his marriage.

Yuuri’s not any more comfortable with this than he was yesterday—he takes his time to answer. “He doesn’t want to talk about it,” he mumbles finally.

Doesn’t want to talk about it—with Katsudon? Poster boy for innocence, care, and compassion? Weird. “Then you say, ‘If you don’t want to, I understand; It’s your right and I’ll respect that. But you matter to me and I want to understand.’ And then you shut up, and you listen.”

“Since when did you get so wise.”

“I’m not fifteen anymore, you know?” Yuri says. And if this is the exact line Lilia gave him when he’d knocked on her door crying one night, so hurt and confused that getting himself there was the only thing his howling id could think of, well—Katsudon didn’t need to know about that, did he.

Yuri remembers that night as the silence stretches. She’d let him cry himself to sleep in his old bed and she'd waited with a coffee first thing the following morning—and she had listened.

He'd told her the entire bullshit story, beginning to end, and she hadn’t said, “You idiot, how could you have been so stupid; what did you expect?” She hadn’t pitied him either. She’d just sat down with him to brainstorm solutions; told him to protect himself if no one else could be arsed. That’s where the “we don’t go to my place” rule comes from—and why Yuri doesn’t follow Proud Dad Otabek on social media.

But Otabek aside.

“You should ask him about Yakov and shit,” Yuri says.

“I know about Yakov.”

“No. No, you don’t,” Yuri spits and stares ahead.

 

___________________________

 

The first e-mail arrives three days later. There’s two more, within the week.

Yuri reads, mind-boggled.

“The fuck,” he says to the room in general.

“That fucking asshole.” He blinks, a little bit in awe.

 

___________________________

 

“Yuri! Hello! I’m just about to catch my flight back; did the emails arrive?”

“Yeah,” Yuri says into his phone, a little dazed.

“Excellent! Now open the one from the Americans.”

“Wait. Where are you, you asshole?”

“Piter, on my way back. You ready?”

“I said wait, I need to start up my laptop. And what the fuck, how the hell did you pull this off?” There’s background noise while Yuri moves, a canned airport PA announcement about some flight or another. Victor does, indeed, appear to be where he says he is.

“Okay, I’m ready,” Yuri says.

“Great. Now click reply. Type exactly what I tell you. Is Yuuri around? Call him over to proofread your English!”

“He’s fucking Japanese, my English is five times better-”

“It’s a professional e-mail, it’s important; one can always miss something,” Victor chides.

“Okay, Okay, whatever. I’ll call him after.”

“Great. You ready to type? Here goes: Dear Mr. Jameson, colon, new line.” Yuri’s keyboard clacking carries over the phone. “I am honored that you’d consider for the position of Junior Assistant Coach to the American Olympic Figure Skating Team. I am currently looking for a coaching opportunity that would allow me to apply my classical training and extensive competitive experience towards giving athletes an edge and helping them grow. Did you type it?”

“Yeah- wait a second-”

“OK, new paragraph: I am currently in talks with the Russian Olympic Federation, as well as with a private donor negotiating on behalf of the Chinese Ministry of Culture and Sport. Of these, your offer is the best fit for what I am looking for, both personally and professionally.”

“Wait, fuck, I trained as an ice skater not as a fucking secretary,” Yuri grumbles, laptop keys still clacking. “All right,” he says.

“New paragraph: After taking into account after-tax income and cost of living, my second-best choice would allow me to save seventy thousand dollars per year while maintaining a comfortable lifestyle. I have until—what’s five business days from now, February fifth?—to respond, and greatly hope that you will make me an offer which will allow me to join your team on comparable terms. New paragraph: Looking forward to hearing from you; new line, Yuri Plisetsky, new line, Two-time Olympic gold medalist, five-time men’s singles world champion, six times Grand Prix winner. Then put Yuuri’s Japanese address and your cell phone underneath.”

Yuri types. “Fuck,” he chokes out, and he wonders whether Victor can tell how tight his chest feels right now.

“I’m fucking proud of you,” Victor says, low and level, into the phone. And yeah—he probably can.

Yuri stays on the phone for a while, saying nothing, just breathing around the sudden lump of whatever this is in his throat and trying not to cry.

On the other end of the line, Victor waits.

“Fuck.” Yuri takes a deep breath. “Yuuri!” he shouts. “Come proofread something!”

Yuuri does. To his credit, his face is completely calm as he reads. He supplies the address of his parents’ onsen, then googles the full name and address of one William Jameson at Team USA so they can properly put it up at the top of the letter. Victor is on speaker phone throughout all this, which makes Yuri feel both thankful and vaguely glad that he won’t be paying his roaming cell phone bill.

“Hmm, okay this looks good,” Yuuri declares, giving the letter one last look-over.

“Alright, press send!” Victor commands.

“Done,” Yuri says, and exhales slowly. “Um, what the fuck just happened?”

Victor laughs that tinkly laugh, the bastard. “I’ll see you soon, hm? I’m so proud of you. Take care of Yuuri until I come back, yes?” he says, and disconnects.

“That fucking bastard,” Yuri says, still staring at the screen on his phone.

 

___________________________

 

In the end, it’s easier than Victor thought it would be.

Once in DC, he checks himself into a hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue. At around 10AM, he makes a call to arrange a lunch meeting for the day after, then walks around the Mall and the Smithsonian until the message trickles up trough various secretaries and he hears back.

Michael Smith’s an older guy who is head coordinator of something or another at Team USA, a connection of Coach Martin who worked with Julie Sanchez, who was in her final year as a women’s competitive skater when Victor was just starting to make it big time. Coach Martin would have loved to lure Victor away from Yakov and had tried every chance he got, mainly by chatting in that overly-familiar, excited way Americans have and slapping Victor on the back.

Victor never did anything but humor him, but somehow, Coach Martin still picks up the phone when Victor calls, waiting to board his plane to DC.

Yes, of course Coach Martin remembers him: “How are you doing, my boy, I hear you’re up at Denver these days?” Of course Coach Martin knows someone, and yeah, sure he could put them in touch. “But you will have to visit me in Wisconsin and have a drink,” he demands in the fashion of Americans who love to tell you, “you should come and visit me sometime” while meaning, “keep me in mind in case you’ve got a referral.”

Terrence Smith is busy for lunch, so they schedule a dinner. This is good: there’s no natural time limit to dinners, so it shows interest in making a connection with someone of Victor’s background.

They figure out who their mutual acquaintances are over appetizers, then gossip about them all through the main course: the competitive ice skating world is really not that large.

They get a whiskey each after dinner, and Victor promises to find out how Smith’s niece, who’s really into ballet, can get into one of the Bolshoy’s training camps. Getting a spot there is as cut-throat as it is prestigious, but luckily, Victor knows a lady who just happens to be connected to everyone who’s someone in Russian ballet, and who is quite deeply invested in the professional success of a certain snarly twink.

Victor looks at a couple of grainy videos of the girl dancing on youtube and acts interested, then expresses what he hopes passes for erudite admiration of her qualities. Here is Victor’s card; the girl should definitely send her portfolio and he’ll pass it along, and yes, of course it’s fine if it’s in English, no problem whatsoever.

Three whiskeys in, Smith, “oh, please call me Mike!,” reciprocates with the contact information of a Mr. Jameson, the Head Coach of Team USA’s Ice Skating program.

Victor follows up the connection and flies over to Colorado Springs, arranging to meet the guy for lunch. The lunch gets bumped into another dinner—you get more bang for your buck when you’re being wined and dined on a Friday night, and there’s no limit to the number of drinks that’ll follow.

Victor dials up the vapid and a tad-too-earnestly friendly persona he has cultivated for his dealings in America; keeps the wine flowing and acts way drunker than he is.

“Yeah, so I’m really interested in coaching for the Olympic Team,” he says with oafish obviousness that borders on the awkward. “If there are any openings, you would let me know, won’t you? I would be really really grateful.”

When the time comes, Victor says, “Oh, please don’t worry, you’re doing _me_ a favor; the check’s on me.”

Jameson suggests they move to a bar where he keeps ordering on Victor’s tab.

Victor, for his part, is perfect at playing the idiot who thinks the more money he spends buttering up Jameson, the more certain his offer becomes.

To remove any doubt of just how ineptly dumb he is at networking, Victor agrees with every opinion of Jameson’s just a tad too eagerly.

Finally, Jameson bites: Victor was right when thinking that the guy couldn’t have gotten where he is in life without knowing how to play people. Victor appears ambitious and dumb, but he’s still a five-time world champion. He must know things. In particular, he must know gossip about the Russian team that Jameson can try to use to his advantage.

Jameson starts with innocuous questions, Victor with, “oh, but I really should be talking about that;” Jameson counters with a guess that a drunk Victor will surely be tempted to correct, then acts wowed by what an important insider Victor is when Victor does just that.

It’s amazing, really, how masterful Jameson is at this. A dumb, pathetic, but ambitious has-been would have fallen right for it. Victor is neither dumb nor pathetic, but a part of him can’t help but feel the ego trip Jameson’s taking him on even though he knows it was an act.

“And Plisetsky, they’re trying to keep up appearances for the media, but he’s not even certain he’ll compete. He injured his ankle a couple of weeks ago and he’s recovering at the hot springs my husband’s family runs in Japan.” Victor drops.

“Quite overrated as a skater, in my opinion,” Jameson offers.

“Oh, no, he’s really not,” Victor says earnestly. “He’s genuinely that good. He’s the last of our skaters that worked with both Yakov and Baranovskaya; Yakov taught him how to practice so he was strong enough to do four quads per program at sixteen. Then he got so pissed off that I left, he got this stern former prima ballerina who’d been training the Bolshoi girls for the last 25 years to work with him one-on-one; I’ve seen this guy dance, he could walk into the Bolshoi and be their male lead tomorrow if he wanted,” Victor waxes poetic.

“Huh, I doubt it,” grumbles Jameson.

“Well, say what you will, but I’ve seen him with the younger crowd. Popovich calls me in to advise on recruitment every now and then, or to sit on training and give feedback so the kids can have an extra opinion—Plisetsky’s really great with them. He’s got this rapport, you know?” Victor blinks earnestly and waves his hand. “Like, Yakov was good, but his kids achieved in spite of his “motivation,” not because of it. Plisetsky’s got everything Yakov had: the knowledge, both skating and ballet, but the people skills, too.”

“People skills,” Jameson harrumphs. “Everyone and their mom have “people skills” these days.”

“Well, Plisetsky does more actual coaching than Popovich, even though it’s informal and he’s not getting paid for it. The Russian Figure Skating Federation sent in a couple of people to observe; he’s pretty much got an open offer to coach the Olympic Team whenever he decides to step down. He’s just trying to decide if it’ll be now or next year. I tell him, ‘Go win another medal, you’ll have the rest of your life to be a coach, enjoy your success while it lasts, you know?”

Jameson changes the topic. “So what’s up with Popovich, then? To be honest, I was surprised when they chose him over you; you were always the better skater.”

“I know, right? I am almost as good as Plisetsky, and I’m more experienced with coaching. Like, we work mostly with second tier skaters right now at Detroit—but then, that type of experience is even more valuable, isn’t it? Anyone can train top athletes, they basically train themselves. What you need to be is, like me, you need to be able to raise people’s level!”

“Hmph,” Jameson says.

“I will make an excellent addition to your team, you’ll call me if you have an opening, right?”

“Of course, of course,” says Jameson. “We get along quite well, now, don’t we? Shall we get some more whisky?”

 

___________________________

 

The next morning, after Victor pukes his guts out down the Holliday Inn toilet and manages to keep down a coffee, he makes another call.

Russia’s easier; he knows everyone in Russia. It goes something like this: “Hey, Misha, long time no hear, how’s the wife? How’s the kids? Oh, and by the way, Yuri’s staying with us, looks like the Americans are trying to dab him to coach the Olympic team! It’s just a junior position but they’re really offering enough money to make it worth his while. He’s even thinking of quitting training mid-season, can you believe it? ...But, don’t spread it around, will you? He really hasn’t made up his mind yet and I don’t want to put him in an awkward position.”

Next is Guang-Hong Ji. Victor won’t even try to pretend to know how to play that system, but he could ask Guang-Hong a favor: go over the head of his current coach (who would certainly shut this down if she knew as it would interfere with her own career aspirations) and make it known to the appropriate people that there’s rumors: Plisetsky’s injury is making him think of retiring now rather than next year, and both the Americans and the Russians are fighting over him.

It would go quite far in advancing the reputation of the Middle Kingdom in international skating to have a talent with so much knowledge, both technical and coaching, on their side.

Then Victor could see about hiring Guang-Hong in Denver.

“Eight years on an expert visa, and it’s a green card—and from there, it’s very easy to get a citizenship! Well, if you don’t end up marrying one of those tall blond girls they have; I swear to God their tits are even bigger than the tits of Russian girls!”

Guang-Hong giggles.

In a couple of days, an email from a Chinese sponsor under the aegis of China’s Ministry of Culture lands in Yuri’s mailbox.

The final leg of Victor's trip is Lilia in St. Petersburg. He needs to tell her what he just did and persuade her to invite a sixteen-year-old from Virginia for an audition to the Bolshoi summer training camp.

___________________________

 

His Yuris meet him at the airport. One of them leans on the railing and drowns Arrivals in attitude with his mere presence; the other looks so cute and huggable Victor wants to cuddle him into next week.

This time, it’s Yuri who throws himself at Victor with a running hug, and Yuuri who stands a little bit behind, shaking his head and going, “You wanker. You absolute, horrible—you complete wanker.”

Yuuri’s still better at the running hugs, and Yuri’s still better at cursing like a sailor, but he’s never loved them both more.

___________________________

 

“I’m starting next month,” Yuri tells Victor. “On the third. I think I’ll go see Lilia, arrange about getting my shit shipped over. Tell Georgi I’m not going back.”

Victor nods.

“I think I’ll go see Chris, next. I need to chill, and he’s always good for that,” Yuri says. “Plus, I need cash like fuck.”

“Okay,” Victor says and takes Yuri’s hand. “Come back to me soon.” Then: “Fuck, I can’t believe you’re gonna be an hour’s drive away, and not a fucking trans-continental flight.”

He finds himself with an arm-full of Yuri, just holding. Yuri's hair smells of those little bottles of Yuutopia shampoo. Victor breathes in, then sighs into his hair. He hadn't realized how anxious he'd been until Yuri was back in his arms—this time, to stay.

“Thank you,” Yuri says softly.

“Hmm. Thank Lilia, too, when you see her.”

Yuri raises an eyebrow.

“She gave me a kick in the ass to check up on what's really going on with you,” Victor explains. “Plus she pulled a couple of favors to make your job possible. She cares about you, too, you know.”

“Yeah. I know,” Yuri says.

 

___________________________

 

“Come with me to Russia,” Victor tells Yuuri after he’s sends off Yuri at the airport. “I need to go visit Yakov. There's things to sort out things with his caretaker, and I also need to meet with a lawyer. It would mean a lot to me if you... were there. If you were more involved in that part of my life.”

“Of course I will,” Yuuri tells him softly.

Victor takes his hand, and squeezes. He doesn't have to say, "thanks." 

Yuuri knows.

Victor wonders what it would be like to open the heavy, piss-stained door to Yakov's apartment building together. 

Yuuri squeezes his hand back.

“Um, and also,"Victor says as he rubs the back of his neck, "I may have promised Guang Hong a job.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who hung around for this trip, and it was a trip, at least for me. 
> 
> Edit: yeah, OK, opening this up for comments was a mistake--no comments, please. Apologies to anyone who wishes they could have discussed this, but... this is why we can't have nice things :(


	15. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Here's the ending I was working towards. 
> 
> Please do not leave comments. Kindly take your Discourse elsewhere.

“So. Christmas.” Yuri says over the phone in a somber voice, and somehow Yuuri knows exactly what he means.

“You think, um, we should...”

“Jesus Christ, are you actually thirty-five? ‘Cause right now you sound like you’re twelve and you just heard someone talk about titties. Yeah, we should. It would make him super happy and you know it. We should just negotiate the fuck out of it first.”

“Um, I guess, yeah, we could ask him...”

“Him? Not him. Us. You and me. That asshole’s gonna get what we’re gonna give him, and he’s gonna like it. But we should really make sure we’re OK with what’s happening. Not step on each other’s toes.”

“Yeah… that’s… that’s smart of you to think about.”

“Katsudon. Chill. This is awkward for me too, if it makes you feel any better; I’m just excellent at covering it up with grumpy bravado. Had an alcoholic Russian grandpa and Yakov as a coach. And Lilia is my example for maternal TLC.”

Yuuri can’t help it. He laughs, and the tension fades a little. “Yeah, no. Good thinking—both that it will make him happy and that we should talk about it first. So. Um. Was there anything in particular you wanted to do?” Yuuri says, trying to be brave and act his age.

“Hm. We should each make a list,” Yuri says. “What’s a hard no, what’s a maybe, what’s kind of OK. Then we choose from the kind of OK list.”

“That’s our criteria for success, kind of OK?” says Yuuri, amused. “There’s nothing you’re really excited to try?”

“You wish, Katsudon.” There’s a beat of silence. Then Yuri sighs. “Look, I’m not going to pretend that we wouldn’t each of us prefer to have him to ourselves. I’m a jealous fuck and I get him better than you do about some things, but I can’t give him wholesomeness and happy families: mom and dad and nieces and nephews and friends who all smile at him gently and exude joy when he’s around. You can give him all of that, but- a person needs to be seen. For who they really are. And if it wasn’t for me fucking it out of him, he’d have been acting out three years into being married to you and fucking it all up. So.”

“You’ve done some thinking,” Yuuri says.

“Yeah. I’ve been seeing this therapist, believe it or not.”

And yeah, this was– Yuri Plisetsky showing a hint of a soft underbelly. Making a bid. “I actually like you, you know,” Yuuri says seriously and hopes this comes across right. “I didn’t always understand you, and I still don’t, in some ways. But—I’ve grown. You’ve grown. And you’ve taken the time to let me get to know you. So. I understand better now, and—I’m trying, too. I hope it shows. And not just for his sake. I think I’d really like to get to know who you are. When you’re ready. On your own time.”

“Wow, Katsudon-”

“No, shut up. Listen. You go and really think about what you’re comfortable with. What you would enjoy. We don’t have to do everything, not right now. There’s always next year. I assume after fifteen years with him, you’re not going anywhere—and neither am I. So, if we only cuddle on the couch or just hang out and try to see how much popcorn we can throw into each other’s hoodies without getting noticed, then that’s fine. I think I would enjoy it; hanging out together. Learning how to.”

Yuri is silent.

“You’ll think about it, yeah?” Yuuri says. “And then, let me know. Good?”

“Yeah. Good.” Yuri says quietly and hangs up. That’s fine. Even if it takes a while for the message to sink in, it’s- good.

___________________________

  


“You’ve been thinking,” says Victor quietly into Yuuri’s ear, handing him one of two cups of coffee as he settles next to him on the couch.

Yuuri smiles softly. “It’s just that… it’s been almost a year, hasn’t it? Of him being here, at Colorado Springs.”

“Hmmm.”

“It’s just- it’s been good, hasn’t it? Better than I expected. You’re very good at sticking to our agreements. I know I can get insecure, but you’re always loving to me when you’re here. You always take care to reassure me. I feel I can really trust you, you know? That you love me. That our marriage matters to you. That the two of you are not sitting around secretly laughing at me,” Yuuri jokes.

“No. I’m with him like I’m with you. If there’s anything between me and him, we sort it out between ourselves. I never bring him here. And I never use him as a sounding board about how things are between you and me. If anything comes up, he’s thoughtful. Helpful. If you don’t know him, you’d have a hard time reading for it around all the tirades and the obscenities, but… anyway. What brought this on?”

“He called me, the other day.”

“Oh?” says Victor, slightly worried.

“No, it was, actually- it was good.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. And I was thinking… in a couple of years, when everyone’s ready… I really don’t think I’d mind having him in bed. With us. If it’s something he’d like to do.” Yuuri turns to face his husband—who is kind of slack-jawed and looking at him like he’d just hung the moon.

“Oh,” Victor says and leans in, pressing Yuuri into the couch and kissing him with a heartfelt thoroughness they’d somehow never lost over nine years of marriage: arms around him, little nips, some tongue, more nips.

“Wow,” Victor blinks.

“I think,” Yuuri starts, uncertain. “I think I’d need to hear him apologize about some of the things he said to me, before. I know he was doing his best to deal with a lot of pressure and… stuff… the best way he knew how to at sixteen, and that he’s different now, but… I’d still need to hear him say it. Even though it was a long time ago.”

Victor nods.

“But yeah. It feels good,” Yuuri says, trying for the right word. “Hopeful. Exciting, a little bit, too,” he smiles. “We just need to take it slow. Make sure we do it right.”

“Yeah,” Victor says. “Doing it right is important to me, too.”

“You love him,” Yuuri says and pets his husband’s hair.

“I do,” Victor says. “I love you, too.”

Yuuri knows his husband means it. It may be strange, but he feels like he knows it a little bit more now, when the truth is out and Victor is allowing himself to share all parts of himself, little by little. He wants to say, “Yuri said he’s going to a therapist.” He want to say, “You should go, too—learn to be OK with the past. I’ll come with, if you want someone else there when we talk about it, just to make sure.” But he doesn’t. It’s Victor’s decision, and Victor will make it—or not—when he thinks is right.

Instead, he kisses back.

Their coffees get cold on the table.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> About a month after finishing this, I found myself following the Internet Rabbit Hole to this series of posts on Infidelity:
> 
> Part 1: http://theferrett.livejournal.com/997692.html  
> Part 2: http://theferrett.livejournal.com/1001552.html
> 
> I recommend them as general reading, and not just with reference to YOI, characterization, and shipping. This was, essentially (other than a fix-it fic for Yurio 'cause I'm a sucker for fix-it fic), a fic about Victor being a Desperate Housewife as per the classification of the above two posts. How well I've succeeded in showing the subtle ways in which communication in his marriage breaks down, I don't know--I am not a professional author and I feel like actually doing justice to that would take more writing chops than I've got right now. I wanted to portray his marriage becoming stronger because it now has space for the totality of what he is.


End file.
